Word Crimes:THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7 and BEING THE RICARDOS

An Aaron Sorkin screenplay comes in one of two modes: too much, and way too much. I love the former, but the latter can clang and grate and scrape across my patience. He’s such a wordy, witty writer, capable of soaring rhetoric and juicy monologues. His ear for embedding characterization in the pithiest of comebacks and most garrulous walk-and-talks is a good match for his interest in high-wire halls-of-power and behind-the-scenes tensions. His characters are often people with inflated egos or self-important positions of influence. He must understand them so well because he’s one of them. When he’s on, he’s one of our best. The too-muchness of his writing makes a perfect match for material. His The Social Network, so sharply perceptive about Facebook’s founding conflicts, balanced with beautifully clinical David Fincher direction, remains one of the finest scripts in recent memory. But when he’s off—taking his tendencies to overwrite his subtext until it spills out as just plain text like in howlingly clunky tone-deaf attempts like media-matters dramas The Newsroom or Studio 60—it curdles fast. When you’re an artist who thrives when high on your own supply, it’s easy to get way too much out of each moment.

Take last year’s The Trial of the Chicago 7. It’s based on the real circus of a court case following protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention that were violently broken up by a bludgeoning police presence. A group of leading leftist activists were targeted by the newly elected Nixon administration to make an example of them. The judge ended up a loony attention seeker who made all kinds of questionable decisions—like ordering Bobby Seale, a leader in the Black Panthers, bound and gagged—while the defendants, many previously unknown to each other, often used the massive press interest in their plight as a soapbox on which to make important points about the state of the country. (They also used it as an excuse to poke prankish fun at the authorities who were in the process of overreaching.) Sorkin sees in this case good reason to comment on our present right-wing lunacies and various social movements protesting them. But he puts too much spin on the ball in each sequence. Characters are practically explaining this connection to us as monologues and jostling debates are carried out with musty pseudo-historical perspective.

Not helping matters, the flat staging from Sorkin as director tends to undercut the few good moments he’s written.With Trial he somehow can’t pull off the courtroom sparring he crafted so well as screenwriter for A Few Good Men's "you can't handle the truth," or the Social Network depositions. Here it’s self-consciously, and badly, theatrical, with a host of fine actors in full showy character mode (Sacha Baron Cohen, Jeremy Strong, Eddie Redmayne, Michael Keaton, Frank Langella, John Carroll Lynch, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) chewing over flashy phrasing as the camera pushes plainly and shafts of light falls simply and dramatically. One wonders what a better visual sense would’ve shaped out of these lumpy scenes. But then I recall how Sorkin’s shaping of the pages pushes the real events toward big fake movie climaxes that are somehow flatter and less surprising than the actual events. Just when he builds up a head of self-righteous steam and winds up a character to let them go, it rings the falsest. The best scenes are the smallest, and the simplest, where an old pro like Keaton can underplay the overwritten and end up, on balance, just fine. Strangely, for a writer prized for his verbal pyrotechnics, the court sequences are somehow less outrageous and dramatic and hilarious and suspenseful than the actual court transcripts. Those have been used as the basis for a fine animated documentary from a dozen years back—Brett Morgen’s Chicago 10—and are available for free online. Those are the better way to experience the trial.

With that in mind, one might think the new Sorkin picture, a behind-the-scenes of I Love Lucy in a moment of high-stakes drama, would pale in comparison to simply watching the still-brilliant original episodes of the classic sitcom. Of course it does. But that’s where I was pleasantly surprised to be wrong that it wouldn’t be fun enough on its own terms. I was quite taken with Being the Ricardos for playing up the ways in which it stacks up historical conflicts into one stuffed week. Lucille Ball is accused of being a communist (which she was, once) at the heights of the Red Scare. Desi Arnaz is tagged as a philanderer (which he was) at one of many periods of peak tabloid power. And, if the sponsors or the network don’t pull the plug for either or both of those scandals, the power couple behind the program are determined to use Lucy’s real life pregnancy for her character, too. (One suit bristles at the idea that it’ll make viewers think about…you know…how that happened. They sleep in twin beds, he reminds.) That Sorkin’s invention places these tricky moments all in the same short period of time—the structure is all showbiz hustle, as the movie starts with a table read and ends with a taping—gives the movie a pressure cooker of competing interests. His script weaves in and out of the various conflicts and keeps the ensemble a plate-spinning act of worries and wants. It successfully cross-breeds the let’s-put-on-a-show zippiness with an earnest grappling with the people behind-the-scenes and What It All Meant.

Sorkin’s brand of pushy cleverness fits a great cast of actors playing performers and other creative types. Here Nicole Kidman becomes a Lucy who’s ambitious, steely, hugely talented, and knows what she wants. She is clearly in charge of the show, and really won’t back down from insisting being a Communist used to be considered a valid option for supporting the workers of the country. Javier Bardem plays Desi as a chipper man constantly tending to his ego, but with real love for Lucy. (He also doesn’t suffer fools, such as one well-meaning producer who tries to convince him he’s the “I” who “Loves Lucy” and therefore the top-billed title character.) His Cuban roots make him a bit more uncomfortable with her politics. (There Sorkin tries a smidge too much for phony both-sides balance.) The main couple is, as on the show, surrounded by a sharp-tongued supporting cast. Nina Arianda’s Ethel and J.K. Simmons’ Fred are great inhabitations with sly side-eyed commentary on, challenges to, and support for the main pair. And the show’s crew features Tony Hale, Alia Shawkat, Jake Lacy, Clark Gregg and more hustle through the stages, wardrobe department, and writing rooms. It’s a fine feat that mixes the sort of clever darting dialogue and blunt force messaging that a great cast can sell if Sorkin serves it up well.

There’s a kind of gleaming soft-focus romanticism to its approach, a weren’t-the-olden-days-grand? gloss to the sometimes-reductive smushing of so much social upheaval and conflict into one heavy week. (It spackles it over, somewhat, by having fake documentary talking heads from actors playing older versions of the writers’ room act as a Greek chorus of sorts.) And the writing sometimes tries too hard to make the ideas fit our modern context. Would Lucy really have accused someone of “Gaslighting” her? Nonetheless, it’s has the kind of fizz and pop that’s pleasing to the ear and flies by in a flash. Sorkin’s direction stays out of his writing’s way, and has a fine eye for the difference between on- and off-stage antics. I found it a satisfying and entertaining look at making a show in a time with an actual blacklist bouncing entertainers out of the business for their politics, when sexual mores were tamped down and repressed and not to be discussed, and when women and people of color weren’t to be treated as equals on or behind the screens. And yet, through making one of the greatest television comedies (who doesn’t know the chocolate factory sequence?), here’s a couple that manages to push on the edges of those societal constraints at a time when it could’ve resulted in a show going off the air. Now that’s cancel culture.

Blast from the Past: CRISIS IN SIX SCENES

Woody Allen’s latest production, Crisis in Six Scenes, has his best premise since Midnight in Paris. Set in the late 1960s, the social unrest of the times comes right into the house of a stuck-in-their-ways elderly couple. Their cozy home in upstate New York becomes a refuge for a radical when the daughter of an old friend breaks in. She’s wanted by the government for her membership in a left-wing protest group whose activities include, in addition to the usual demonstrations and rabble rousing, bomb building, cop wounding, and sedition fomenting. The elderly couple wants to help the poor girl out, the more open-minded marriage counselor wife (the wonderful Elaine May in her first role in 16 years) eager to keep her hidden, while the paranoid ad man husband (Allen) descends into a stubborn bundle of helpless nerves as the youthful firebrand (Miley Cyrus) slowly unravels their lives’ predictable patterns. It’s all a great excuse for Allen to explore his usual interest in intermingling relationship tangles with philosophical inquiry.

By far his longest narrative project – clocking in at well over two hours total – it is a six-part miniseries for Amazon. (The shift in form would seem more of a leap if the consistency of his filmmaking over decades – the repetitive themes, recurring character types, the regular font, the usual jazz scores – weren’t already a version of television’s comforting familiarity.) He introduces a large cast of characters with competing loyalties, like the conservative business major (John Magaro) who is smitten by the fetching fugitive, much to the dismay of his debutante fiancé (Rachel Brosnahan). And then there’s a cornucopia of familiar and fun faces as neighbors, patients, parents, cops, and protestors (Becky Ann Baker, Lewis Black, Max Casella, David Harbour, Nina Arianda, Christine Ebersole, Joy Behar, Michael Rapaport, and more). It’s stuffed with personality, but not every character comes to life with as much fullness as the time could permit, like soggy and underdeveloped romantic triangles amongst the younger characters.

There’s also the matter of political rhetoric, for as loaded and provocative as it could be it is instead cozy and comfortable fuzzy hindsight. The prickliest it gets is an early lament about how divisive and polarized the country’s politics are, a wry what-goes-around-comes-around smirk at our circular national crises and our inability to move past them. The great premise is just an excuse to knock contentedly humdrum characters into frazzled situations. I imagine such areas of thinness would be excused if this were a shorter feature. With so much time on his hands, though, there’s simply too much room here for dead air, stiff setups, tone-deaf teasing (a tossed off one-liner about a troubled adopted daughter lands poorly), and lackadaisical reaches for obvious developments. In order to go about stretching this tight little farce over so many segments the plot takes some meandering and the zip in the tension falls slack.

Then there is, of course, the slight stiffness and stodginess that’s crept into Allen’s filmmaking of late, a half-theatrically stilted, half-literary dustbin approach in which exposition is a little too plainly displayed and some zingers come wheezing to the punchline. But even when the writing gets a tad stale, the cast is so energetic and pleasantly amusing, it coasts along on comfortable charms and relaxed charisma. Allen is the quintessential Allen type, May is totally at ease playing the slightly frazzled upper-middle-class pseudo-intellectual (her comfort zone since her Nichols and May days), and Cyrus is just the right young, earnest, half-idealistic/half-cynical goof to send them spinning. Per usual, the right ensemble can carry over slightly below par Allen writing, and this one is overflowing with the exact right casting to elevate the downtimes, the patches that could’ve used another draft or two.

The stage is set for the characters’ conflicts to pile up quite swimmingly, and find occasion in the unevenness for some of the funniest scenes Allen has written in a while. May’s counseling sessions are perfect little sketches, and recurring scenes with her lovable, and increasingly politically rambunctious, little old ladies’ book club are a terrific throughline. Allen and Cyrus spar over food, consumerism, and communist ideals in agreeably prickly wars of words. There’s even a scene in which May scrambles over rooftops after a briefcase of contraband Cuban currency, so this is the sort of story that escalates in sometimes satisfyingly silly and unpredictable ways. Allen has some fun with the historical context, dusting off old quips about Vietnam, hippies, Nixon, Black Panthers, war protestors, and Latin American revolutionaries. (There’s an echo of Bananas there, I suppose.) By the final twenty minutes, which include a sustained and hilarious homage to the Marx brothers’ famous Night at the Opera stateroom sequence, the whole fitfully farcical storyline has arrived at a satisfying crescendo that’s well worth the wait.

Anything Goes: MIDNIGHT IN PARIS

Note: Many critics have no problem launching into spoiler territory while discussing this film, but I’ll keep it relatively spoiler free here, discussing themes and plot in such a way as to preserve the surprise of utterly splendid paths the movie takes.

Who could have guessed that the most transporting fantasy of the summer would take place in a film that never really leaves the real world? Woody Allen’s latest, his forty-first film, is Midnight in Paris, a wholly enveloping diversion, a pleasantly layered delight. It presents Paris as a city of real magic with an irresistible draw that pulls in anyone on the right wavelength. I must admit that I fell in love with the city myself while on a school trip last year. It’s a city of such beauty, such fine art, and with a clear, direct sense of connection to times gone by, a city that I felt had always resided in my soul, that I found myself nodding with agreement when a character in the film mentions that Paris just might be the hottest spot in the universe.

Allen opens his film with a dreamy tourist’s gaze. He draws his film slowly and patiently into being with a loving sightseeing montage that looks, really looks, at Paris. It’s plain to see why it’s so easy to fall in love with this city, the cobblestone streets, the stunning architecture, and the extraordinary sights around every corner. It’s also easy to see why a self-proclaimed Hollywood hack like Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) would want to use his visit as the perfect opportunity to buckle down and finish his first novel. His fiancé (Rachel McAdams) and her parents (Kurt Fuller and Mimi Kennedy) would rather zip along on a tight schedule to shop and taste wine. They’re not attuned to the magic of their surroundings. “If I see one more charming bistro…” the fiancé grumbles.

Gil’s not like his future in-laws. He lets the city simmer in his psyche. He knows the place has great magic. He reveres the Paris of the 20’s, a time when American artists of all kinds showed up to create masterpieces, and sees himself, the struggling author that he is, as one of a long, continuous line of talents living, partying, and creating during their time as Parisians. Gil is so inspired that one night he leaves his fiancé and her finicky pseudo-intellectual friends (Michael Sheen and Nina Arianda) behind just to wander the city, to get his creative energy sizzling and buzzing. Paris contains such magic in this film that when a car pulls up and partygoers wave at him and ask him to join them not only does he go along, he finds only ever more to delight and surprise him. When he ends up at a party where everyone is dressed in 20’s garb and a man is playing Cole Porter songs at a piano, why, it only seems natural that he’s fallen immediately into the right crowd.

While his increasingly befuddled family resign themselves to letting him wander off to enjoy himself, he gets to mingle with all manner of Parisians. Wilson plays the part of the yearning nostalgic neurotic artist perfectly with the right blend of anxiety and affability. He comes into contact with all sorts of interesting characters, a gruff, manly writer (Corey Stoll), a socialite (Alison Pill) and her author husband (Tom Hiddleston), a gorgeous fashionable muse (Marion Cotillard), a self-absorbed surrealist (Adrien Brody), and a warm, encouraging editor (Kathy Bates), among many others.

This is a love-drunk fan letter to Paris, literature, and art that makes for a casually dense, parable-like tale that’s a warm rebuke and sentimental smirk to nostalgia and a loving embrace of all that makes us human. Here’s a film that falls in love with a city that forever repays that love. Here’s a film that says artists are human, heroes are flawed, and yet can’t creating and experiencing art be a source of endless joy? One simply can’t live in the past, but isn’t it pretty to think so? To create is to look forwards and backwards at once, a tricky prospect. Here Allen has made a film that seems to do just that for him. It pulls together some of his favorite themes (artists, art, relationships) and passions (literature, jazz, history) and repackages them in ways new and surprising, comforting and familiar.

The beauty of the film is that it can be so thoughtful, philosophical even, and yet so utterly transporting, so completely and utterly entertaining that the outside world melts away for a while. It’s the flat out funniest picture Allen’s made in one or two decades. It’s a grand hug of a film that loves France, loves art, loves love and only grows richer the more you are able to catch the historical references. It’s a sort of romantic comedy, but it succeeds by treating the romance as almost a side-thought. It’s an artful, sweet tourist’s fantasy that succeeds by being so matter-of-fact about its movie magic. What a wonderful film! I practically floated out of the theater with the film resonating so deeply and beautifully, filling me with total joy. Living in the present might not always be so beautiful, so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.