GLENN KENNY'S REVIEW (posted 2/28/08)

Brett Morgen's The Chicago 10 proposes to address relatively recent American history in a way the kids can understand: as a cartoon. Morgen’s had some experience in that medium, having co-directed 2002’s playful Robert Evans quasi-biodoc, The Kid Stays in the Picture, which depicted many of movie man Evans’ pensées and exploits in animation.

Here he turns this technique to a subject of somewhat greater import: the galvanic unrest at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and the subsequent trial of 8 activists on varied conspiracy charges. The scenes of radical foment and the actual marches and riots are shown in archival footage, much of it excellent; Morgen also does a sly job with his musical selections, toggling between the old school MC5 (who actually played the Festival of Life at Lincoln Park, and whose performance I would have liked more of here) and the rather more newfangled Rage Against the Machine.

The courtroom scenes are the animated ones…and said animation looks rather cruder than your average PS3 game. Matter of fact, I’m wondering if maybe Morgen and company wouldn’t want to develop this in that direction, to satisfy a more cerebral, history-minded gamer. But never mind. The material is incredibly compelling—though trust me, it was even more compelling (and scary) as it was happening.  It seemed as if the stand-off between a wild-haired, kick-out-the-jams activist youth and a hate-filled, petulant establishment was constantly on the brink of boiling over—and it did, at Kent State, a couple of years hence.

Which is not to say that there wasn’t real damage inflicted in 1968, but the kids didn’t have anything to do with it. The picture spends some time on the April ’68 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. But here’s the weird part—it never once mentions (at least in the cut I saw, at Sundance in ’07) the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Without which the Chicago mess might not have happened at all. 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.  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? Not to mention the voice talent acting the parts of those personalities: Hank Azaria as a snarky, unruly Abbie Hoffman, Mark Ruffalo as the somewhat more considered Jerry Rubin, Dylan Baker as the pacifist non-hippie David Dellinger, and more. And one should not forget a very grizzled-sounding Roy Scheider playing the seemingly addled Judge Julius Hoffman.  It is a fine and characteristic performance; even though we can’t see the late, great, Scheider’s face, we can practically hear him raising an eyebrow at the madness of that courtroom.