Screening Reaction: 'Chicago 10'

Chicago 10 (2007), dir. Brett Morgan
I have to respect Brett Morgan for taking as many bold stylistic chances as he does. However, while I admire the audacity of some of his ideas, they do not always work for me. Unfortunately, one of my biggest complaints is the main stylistic flourish: the animated courtroom reenactments. The idea is fine, but the execution falters.
The main problem is the animation style, which simply does not appeal to me. It is crudely done and looks like the graphics in a bad video game. There are several brief vignettes with different animation styles, all of which I preferred to the style used in the courtroom. The stylistic excess in the animated sequences is also rather distracting. The camera frequently swoops and zips around the room. If two characters are having a back and forth conversation, sometimes, instead of a shot-reverse shot, there is a 180 degree whip pan. It is especially jarring to see these modern tricks when the rest of the film is archival footage from the event. Although I was not crazy about these elements, I suspect that, with time, I could have gotten used to them. However, the film keeps cutting to the real archival footage and the clash kept taking me out of the film.
It all comes down to a matter of consistency. The rules are so different between the halves of the film that I kept being distracted. Even within the animation, the rules occasionally change. At one point, Allen Ginsberg levitates in the middle of a scene; but this type of fantastic, absurd imagery is not a motif. It is just a one-off oddball moment. If you keep changing the paradigm, it takes me out of the story; if I understand the logic and it stays consistent, however bizarre it may be, I have no problem. For example, another bold choice Morgan makes, which works because it is a constant, is the use of modern music.
I did not agree with all the music choices, especially the anti-Bush song by Eminem, which was too on the mark, but I appreciate the unique idea. This is a film about anti-Vietnam protestors that does not use “War” by Edwin Starr. It focuses on hippy types in the 60s, but there is no Jefferson Airplane. How refreshing is that? Morgan is not of the event’s generation, so using that type of music would have been a clichéd bit of posturing. Instead, he uses the music of the younger generation to help contemporary audiences find correlations with this movement. The Chicago 10 spoke to the frustrations and anger of young people in the 60s in a way similar to how heavy metal and rap speak to those of modern day young people.
Although I complain about the animation, I have no issues with the construction of the film, which is great. It is a really wonderfully edited and structured film. It tells parallel stories: that of the buildup to the convention and that of the post-convention trial. The film cuts back and forth between these two story lines, building up the tension in perfect tandem until it reaches the breaking point. The fact that the story arc is so compelling is made all the more impressive by the fact that the narrative is totally constructed with news footage, transcripts, and audio clips. There are no modern day interviews and retrospectives by the participants filling in the gaps. It is all told with the material of the time, which gives the events a palpable immediacy.