Chicago 10.

"If the [1968 Democratic] convention was a tragedy, the trial was a farce," writes J Hoberman in the Voice. "Revisiting events at once overly familiar and impossible to imagine, [Brett] Morgen's impure mix of documentary footage and rotoscopic computer animation is unrelenting Sturm und Drang. Chicago 10 has a deliberate and irritating absence of context but a full appreciation of antics."

"It's like seeing images from 1956 Budapest, except it's the streets of the city I've lived in most of my adult life," writes Ray Pride in Newcity Chicago. "Almost, just almost, the fragments of historical material are pungent enough, iconic enough, to stand out against the underwhelming animation. It ain't Boondocks, an accomplished feat of animation which is also far more incendiary and subversive while beguiling the eye."

"Chicago 10 is a reminder of a time when the counter-culture was out on the street making noise - a history lesson so removed from our present political climate it feels almost like science fiction," writes Jeremiah Kipp in Slant.

"Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair and a producer of The Kid Stays in the Picture, produced Chicago 10 with Mr Morgen," writes Adam Liptak in the New York Times. "He said it was the product of political frustration in the early days of the Iraq war - an anger that has infused his monthly editor's note and the contents of his magazine - and an attempt to rouse young people to action. 'I became incredibly upset,' he said, 'that this young generation of Americans seemed to have no interests at all in the origins of the war in Iraq, the rightness of the war or the possibility of ending the war.'"

"Though by all accounts it is scrupulously accurate in its details, some of the original participants take exception to its revolution-can-be-fun angle," notes Phil Nugent at ScreenGrab:

"This is an Abbie Hoffman story." says Tom Hayden. "Abbie was a great rebel, but there is a danger in theatricalizing history." To which Leonard Weinglass adds, "The film is entertainment, but it is not a political education." (It should be noted that the idea that the trial could best serve its political purposes as an example of living satire also dates back to the time of the trial itself; as early as 1970, just months after the trial ended, Bantam published a paperback collection of comic highlights from the court transcripts. It was titled The Tales of Hoffman and included a chortling introduction by the radical "political critic" Dwight Macdonald.)

"It's safe to say that no one has ever seen a historical documentary shot quite this way - live-action mixed with animation, grainy archival footage juxtaposed with polished Hollywood impersonations," writes S James Snyder in the New York Sun. "'But that's exactly the point,' Mr Morgen said. 'You want audiences to experience this story, not just to sit through a dry recital of the facts.'"

Collider talks with Morgen, and Karina Longworth is struck by how much his next project, "a Courtney Love-approved documentary about Kurt Cobain," resembles AJ Schnack's Kurt Cobain About a Son.

The Boston Phoenix's Peter Keough tells Morgen he has a few problems with Chicago 10.

And the Reeler talks with Morgen, too.

Earlier: Reviews from Sundance 07.

Updates: "As restless and flashy as the radicals it valorizes, Chicago 10 is an apocalyptic dispatch from the past refashioned as a slick flyer for the present," writes Elbert Ventura in Reverse Shot. "With both eyes trained on his audience, Morgen frames his movie as a piece of agitprop, an antiwar exhortation to dormant youth, complete with contemporary rabble-rousing songs (Rage Against the Machine, Eminem, Beastie Boys). The result is less history written with lightning than by lightning: the occasional flash illuminates, but a lot of times you're just left in the dark."

"In all respects, Chicago 10 is maddeningly uneven," writes Benjamin Strong in the L Magazine. "Morgen isn't interested, as a conventional documentarian might be, in critiquing 1960s ideology. Ultimately, the film scans best as a Rorschach exam, testing the limits of your patience for unreconstructed hippie nostalgia."

Updates, 2/28: "Morgen displays obvious admiration for the Yippies' festive mentality in the shadow of authority, but he makes a valiant effort to avoid treating them as relics," writes Eric Kohn in the New York Press. "Important questions are raised, but for all the boldness of its design, Chicago 10 falls short of providing a solution."

Salon's Andrew O'Hehir talks with Morgen. So does Jamilah King for Pixel Vision.

"The cultural rift in America that year makes today's red state/blue state divide look rather like a petty marital spat, and Sirhan Sirhan's shooting of Kennedy, coming a scant two months after King's death, pushed everything into near-apocalyptic territory," writes Premiere's Glenn Kenny. "You'd never know that from Morgen's film, though it does have its moments; how could it not, given the epochal nature of the events covered and the fascinating personalities involved?"

"2008 is not this generation's 1968," declares Christopher Campbell at Cinematical. "Without acknowledging the obviously apparent intent, Chicago 10 is actually appreciable as one of the most creative and entertaining documentary films in years. And it could indeed be viewed as significant on its own, if we let it exist as such."

Updates, 2/29: In a cover story for the Chicago Reader, JR Jones reminds us, "The Democrats are still feeling the aftershocks of '68 today. Back then, only 13 states held Democratic primaries, and Humphrey skipped them all, taking advantage of the party machinery to wrap up the nomination. That fueled the rage of the demonstrators, and as news of their being beaten and gassed filtered into the International Amphitheater, delegates approved a convention plank to reform the nominating process." A succinct history of the consequences of that reformation follows, and then: "You won't learn any of this from Chicago 10, because Morgen isn't interested in measuring the distance between 1968 and 2008 - he wants to erase it." Which, he finds, isn't necessarily a bad thing. The film is "actually packed with information, its barrage of colorful images culled from both amateur and news footage." Then:

For those of us who weren't there, one revelation of Chicago 10 may be the character of the crowds that turned out to oppose the war. Some fit the description of radical freaks, but most seem like normal middle-class taxpayers.... The record Democratic turnout at this year's primaries and the nearly one million people who've donated to the Obama campaign demonstrate once again that the movement empowers the leader, not the other way around. For dramatic purposes Morgen focuses on ten people, but the real story is the tens of thousands.

"It is a narrow, glib dollop of canned history, an affirmation of received thinking rather than a challenge to it," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "Squandering 40 years of hindsight, Mr Morgen is content to trot out the tired mythology of the era one more time. His mélange of styles and techniques shows visual ingenuity, but not much in the way of historical insight. He takes the intricate, frequently self-contradictory theater of the New Left at face value, and panders to the credulity of the audience by breathing new life into old clichés. Groovy! Power to the people!"

"Morgen's stated goal of firing up young viewers elides the fact that, at the time of the trial, the five key defendants already represented an older generation, with many younger anti-war activists entrained by the militant posturing of Weathermen, or perhaps rededicating themselves to cultural activism, environmentalism, feminism, or gay liberation," writes Ioannis Mookas in Gay City News. "Politically engaged young people today, it seems, might sooner be wont to pass a spare hour stumping for Obama than waxing nostalgic over a thrilling display of legal vaudeville that, on balance, wasn't terribly decisive."

"[I]t haphazardly attempts to both provoke boomer nostalgia and contemporary apprehension while harkening to heroes from 90s pop music and motion capture animation in order to attract youth audiences the filmmakers assume would ever be drawn to material of historical or social importance," writes Brandon Harris. It in the process it shirks off the responsibility to deliver something more comprehensive, ideologically cohesive and clearly relevant to the here and now that Morgen seems to at pains to address. Not for lack of curiosity, Morgen's inability to connect our politically fraught times to the past leaves the whole project with a sense of overwrought miscalculation."

"To round out the modern feel, the director also assembled an impressive pool of voices (Mark Ruffalo, Hank Azaria, Nick Nolte, Jeffrey Wright, Dylan Baker, Liev Schreiber and, in a valedictory performance, Roy Scheider as Judge Hoffman) and secured the rights to an iPod-ready playlist of tunes by the likes of Rage Against the Machine, the Beastie Boys and, for some historical relevance, the MC5 - which often turn this montage-laden project into so much glorified MTV fodder," writes Steve Dollar in the New York Sun.

But for the Los Angeles Times' Carina Chocano, "The director wants to bring recent history to life for people who weren't around to witness it, and in that he succeeds pretty admirably."

For the AV Club's Tasha Robinson, it's "a hugely entertaining piece of pop fluff."

"The irreverent attitude of Chicago 10 is in synch with the times it portrays," writes Jim Emerson. "As an activist documentary with a contemporary agenda, it doesn't pretend to be 'objective' (whatever that means), but to find inspiration in the passion and irreverence of its heroes."

Online listening tips. James Rocchi talks with Morgen for Cinematical; and Morgen's a guest on the Leonard Lopate Show.

Updates, 3/1: "What makes Chicago 10 such an arresting experience is that Morgen truly doesn't give a damn about providing historical context," writes Mike D'Angelo. "He's filmmaker enough to assume that you already know the pertinent details - and that if by some chance you don't know them, you shouldn't be learning them from a goddamn movie."

More interviews with Morgen: Sara Cardace (Vulture) and Eric Kohn (indieWIRE).

Update, 3/5: "Despite its gimmicky attempts to appeal to non-boomers, Chicago 10 is still weirdly enjoyable," writes Gary Moskowitz in Mother Jones.

Posted by dwhudson at February 27, 2008 7:06 AM