What I’m watching: a new film by Aaron Sorkin.

On Netflix: “The Trial of the Chicago 7”

There are many people who have compared the social and political unrest of 1968 with that of 2020 and I believe the comparison is correct.

It was a tumultuous presidential election centering around how to end the Vietnam war. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy were both murdered. There even was a flu pandemic.

In Chicago, at the Democratic Conventions thousands of anti-war protesters gathered in what became a bloody riot, much of which was broadcasted.

Those riots were later the subject of a trial of seven people who had participated in the protest and led them:  Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, and Lee Weiner. Bobby Seale, the chair of the Black Panther Party had been in Chicago to deliver a speech but was not involved with the protests. He was later dropped from the trial.

The men were charged by the Nixon Justice Deaprtment and the  US federal government with conspiracy, inciting to riot, and other charges. Ramsey Clark, the attorney general under President Lydon Johnson, did not want to pursue such charges after an investigation that showed the Chicago Police Department were more at fault than the demonstrators.

The result was a trial that resembled theater at times that lasted for months. Judge Julius Hoffman presided over it with a blatant disregard for even-handedness. Even though nearly of the men were convicted, the sentences were later overturned by an appeals court.

The trial has been the basis for many films over the years, directly or indirectly and this latest one from Sorkin is an accomplished piece of work with a great cast.

The unfortunate thing about the production is it plays fast and loose with the facts. This must be particularly irksome to the people who were indicted or part of the trail who are still alive.

Once I finished watching it, I checked out a great piece on Salon that discussed the truth and fallacies of the film. While Sorkin, who wrote and directed the film, got many things correct, he invented the climactic scene at the end of the film in which Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) reads into the court record more than 5,000 names of American military members who had lost their lives in Vietnam. According to the Salon article, that did not happen.

In 2007, a documentary, “The Chicago 10,” did a better job of presenting the truth by using archival footage and animation with court transcripts.

In terms of a compelling drama, Sorkin does succeed in showing a group of people thrown together who were approaching protesting the war in very different ways. Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong) and Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen) were Yippies who seemed far more interested in chaos than political reform. Hayden and Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp) were more interested in non-violence, especially Davis, and sought a way to make changes through the political system. Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch) was a pacifist of long-standing, who went to prison during WWII because of his beliefs.

Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) should never have been part of this group as he was not involved in the demonstrations.

The performances are solid with Abdul-Mateen, Cohen and Redmayne as stand-outs. Frank Langella does a great job as the judge and Joseph Gordon Levitt is solid as the government’s prosecuting attorney who has some doubts about the trial.

Perhaps it’s because I’m a journalist, I hate to see facts changed in order to simply tell a story. In this case the facts of this case as just as involving as the fiction Sorkin presents.

I get it that Sorkin clearly wanted to present a story to show how little has changed in the social justice of the nation from that time to now. While an accomplished piece of filmmaking that worth watching, I just wished Sorkin had stuck closer to reality.