I've become a lot less patient with certain "based on a true story" style melodramas over the years, because the dramatic license they take goes a step or two too far. Take Aaron Sorkin's latest, "The Trial of the Chicago 7," which he wrote and directed. Clearly, a lot of research and a lot of effort went into depicting the famous trial of prominent '60s activists who were charged with inciting the 1968 Chicago riots, including Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) and Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp) of Students for a Democratic Society, Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen) and Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong) of the Youth International Party, and Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) of the Black Panther Party. This is very timely and interesting material, full of strong characters and some great little moments of pointed commentary and humor. Sorkin, unfortunately, can't seem to curb his own worst impulses.
Let's take the character of David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch), a noted pacifist who is one of the accused. Near the end of the trial, the actions of presiding Judge Hoffman (Frank Langella) are so outrageously unfair and upsetting, Dellinger gets in a scuffle and throws a punch at a guard. This incident is completely manufactured. Worse, it goes completely against the nature of the real Dellinger, who was committed to nonviolent action. Similarly, the movie ends on an obviously manufactured moment of Hollywood courtroom heroism that combined several bits of real events and blew them up to epic proportions. I'll all for dramatizations taking some liberties, like the the three heroines of "Hidden Figures" somehow all being close friends, but the events of "Chicago 7" are already so outsized and present so much juicy drama that I don't understand why the filmmakers thought that they had to resort to this kind of pandering to generate more.
What really gets to me is that there are some wonderful scenes in "Chicago 7." Tom Hayden being grilled on his part in the riots by his lawyer, William Kunstler (Mark Rylance), is fantastic. Abbie Hoffman on the stand and having back-and-forth with federal prosecutor Richard Schultz (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is great. Michael Keaton as former Attorney General Ramsey Clark is a standout in spite of his brief appearances, and Jeremy Strong as Jerry Rubin is just delightful. Sorkin absolutely understands how to put together a crowd-pleasing, impactful picture. He just strikes me as awfully disingenuous as a storyteller this time out, which ends up terribly undercutting the messages that he's trying to get across.
I'm much happier to see the return of Miranda July, with one of her most accessible films, "Kajillionaire." It's got the most conventional narrative by far, though the characters are anything but. The Dyne family is a trio of grifters. Robert (Richard Jenkins) and Theresa (Debra Winger) are the parents of Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood), a young woman in her twenties. All of them are a walking shambles, but Old Dolio looks especially peculiar, dressed in baggy clothes with shaggy long hair. As we watch the three of them pull a series of cons together, it becomes apparent that Old Dolio is woefully undersocialized and has been neglected by her parents to the point where she's emotionally stunted. Then they meet a young woman named Melanie (Gina Rodriguez), who the parents bring into one of their jobs, and everything changes.
"Kajillionaire" is full of wacky, off-the-wall concepts and moments of farce. There's the landlord who cries constantly, and rents the Dynes an office space where foam seeps through the cracks in the walls twice a day. There's the funny limbo walk that the Dynes do in order to sneak by the landlord's office, and Old Dolio's bizarre fake ninja moves to evade security cameras. There's the fascinating visit to the house of a dying man, who wants to hear the sounds of his family as he goes, prompting the Dynes to playact being the normal household that they never were. There's the entire childhood's worth of birthday presents. There's the part where Old Dolio dances. And yet, underlying the comedy is some truly touching, genuine human drama as Old Dolio faces her worst fears about her parents and learns to open up to the rest of the world.
I am compelled as a movie nerd to compare "Kajillionare" to the work of whimsical auteurs like Wes Anderson and Michel Gondry, because it exists in a world that plays by its own metaphysical rules, has such a distinctive style and, and gives performers like Evan Rachel Wood and Gina Rodriguez the opportunity to deliver some great comic performances. However, what I especially appreciate about July's work is that it's so minimalist and unfussy, so emotionally well grounded, and it looks at these relationships through a different lens than we typically see. No matter your background, I doubt there's anyone out there who won't empathize with Old Dolio and Melanie as they try to navigate their rocky personal crises, or discover new aspects of themselves.
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