Sundance. Chicago 10.

"'GodDAMN, that was good!' Such was Catherine Keener's Eccles-lobby review of Chicago 10, Brett Morgen's kinetic, animated-archival documentary about the trial of Abbie Hoffman, Tom Hayden and other Yippies who protested the 1968 Democratic Convention," blogs Variety in an entry noting the political overtones of this year's Sundance lineup. "'After 9/11, we stepped back. We said, "Let the leader lead,"' [Robert] Redford told the opening-night audience. 'Now, I think we're owed a big, massive apology.'"

"Brett Morgan and Nanette Burstein made a couple of great documentaries together, On The Ropes and The Kid Stays In The Picture," David Poland reminds us. This is "Morgan's first solo film as director" and "the biggest disappointment of Chicago 10, which tells the story of what is best known as The Chicago Seven trial (add Bobby Seale and two lawyers to get to 10), is that in choosing to tell this story again, after it's been told quite well before, this film adds almost nothing to the conversation. In fact, after seeing it, I really have no idea what Mr Morgan thought he was after when he took this on."

Cinematical editor James Rocchi has a problem with the animation, with "how unlike people the created images are.... Chicago 10 is an interesting film about an interesting time in the lives of some interesting people, but you can't shake the feeling that these real-life radicals might have been better served by a slightly less radical approach to telling their story."

Variety's Todd McCarthy finds it "less interested in offering a fresh, probing look at what took place on the streets during the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the circus trial that followed than it is in celebrating the stars of the anti-war movement and rallying the current generation to follow their examples." But: "Commercial appeal to a young contempo audience is conceivable but decidedly questionable."

Eric Kohn, blogging for the New York Press, was "put off at first by the inclusion of animation, but the technique grew on me; the behavior that took place in the courtroom, when the leaders of the Yippie protest group were denied their Constitutional rights again and again by a madcap geezer judge (the script was provided by court transcripts), are corrupt enough to seem far-fetched.... Although Chicago 10 hasn't yet been bought by a distributor, I have no question it'll get snatched up in short order and play to large crowds of enthusiastic New York hipsters (the rest of the country, I'm not so sure about). Members of the crew seemed to agree with me. 'Yeah, New York's gonna love it,' said one animator, slouching against the wall of Spur's balcony and reflecting on the production experience. 'And Chicago,' I added, joined by another effects person who spoke with me in unison.... [Jeff] Dowd, who really does look and sound just like the slacker character he inspired, apparently loved the film. So when it comes to the primary philosophies at the heart of Chicago 10, the dude abides."

"Despite Morgen's best intentions and the considerable skill of editors Stuart Levy and Kristina Boden, the film never coalesces into a fresh contribution to these well-told events," writes Zoom In's Annie Frisbie. "By eschewing traditional documentary techniques like talking heads and text slates, Morgen denies himself his best tools for presenting necessary background information and nuance. It's a daunting - though not impossible - challenge that Chicago 10 doesn't meet." But: "The true failure of Chicago 10 is that its heroes seem ultimately no less arbitrary in their decisions and dogmatic in their positions than those the movie wishes to criticize for our own endless, meaningless war."

Online viewing tips. "The spirit of protest, the focus on a provocative film, and an outspoken filmmaker are key messages that underscored an emerging voice that the Sundance leadership are trying to convey," writes indieWIRE's Eugene Hernandez in an opener that points to a video interview with Morgen. Meantime, Eugene himself is interviewed for Reid Rosefelt's "very first video blog." At Zoom In. Where they do on-the-fly video very, very well indeed.

Updates, 1/20: Jennifer Hillner for Wired News: "I left the screening last night shocked (did they really bind and gag Black Panther Bobby Seale during the court proceedings?), entertained (activist Abbie Hoffman spewed some seriously hilarious lines), and roused (eternal vigilance is the price of liberty afterall)."

Andrew O'Hehir in Salon: "Sundance has essentially become two festivals: One of them is still a treasure hunt for 'undiscovered' wonders - I use the quotation marks because every film in this fest has already, by definition, been discovered by someone - and the other is a PR extravaganza for semimajor pictures already well along the money-slick freeway toward a screen near you. Thankfully, those two streams converged with unusual grace on Thursday night in the world premiere of Chicago 10, an exhilarating, sure-to-be-controversial film that is like nothing you've ever seen about the 60s before."

"Look out, Haskell, it's animated," quips Ray Pride. "[T]he film makes a lurid, even fatal mistake: using crude, cheap-looking, never beautiful, merely illustrative videogame-style animation.... You can't top the real stuff in the archival snippets."

Eric Kohn talks with Morgen for the Reeler.

Update, 1/21: "I'm not about to ignore the festival's highlight-to-date just because everybody else rushed headlong to miss the boat," insists Mike D'Angelo at ScreenGrab. "What Morgen has done with Chicago 10 is truly remarkable, perhaps unprecedented: He's made a historical documentary that takes place entirely in the present tense. And to that end, he's sacrificed exposition for immediacy, thereby trading something movies don't do very well in favor of the medium's greatest strength. Critics, as usual, have misunderstood." He explains.

Update, 1/22: A "fitting love song to misfits who might not be quite sure where they're going, but are intent on getting there," writes Jeremy Mathews in Film Threat.

Update, 1/24: There's a back story to Reid Rosefelt's relationship with Morgen. But they're fine now. They talk in front of a video camera for Zoom In Online.

Update, 1/25: "'This is not a history lesson about 1968,' stated director Brett Morgen before a screening of Chicago 10," writes Beth Gilligan, opening Not Coming to a Theater Near You's Sundance coverage. "[T]hose who took the director’s words at face value were rewarded in full by the bristling energy of this inventive, captivating documentary."

Update, 1/27: Paul Krassner, a Yippie himself once (here's his site and here's his Wikipedia entry), recalls in the Los Angeles Times that "Brett invited me to write four specific animated scenes," and, "Although Brett 'loved, loved, loved' the scenes I wrote, the backers objected to the use of LSD, fearful of diverting attention from the main focus of the film. I was disappointed, if only for the sake of countercultural history.... Thus, the hurricane, which was originally going to open the film, has been omitted, but it'll be on the DVD."

Coverage of the coverage: The Park City Index.

Posted by dwhudson at January 19, 2007 9:54 AM