Chicago 10 From:Jeffrey Wright , Nick Nolte , Roy Scheider , Hank Azaria , Mark Ruffalo , Paramount , Brett Morgen ,
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Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Paramount
EAN: 0097368926844
Format: AC-3
Format: Animated
Format: Color
Format: Dolby
Format: DVD-Video
Format: Subtitled
Format: Widescreen
Format: NTSC
Weight: 15 hundredths-pounds
Label: Paramount
Manufacturer: Paramount
Number Of Items: 1
Packaged Height: 60 hundredths-inches
Packaged Length: 740 hundredths-inches
Packaged Weight: 30 hundredths-pounds
Packaged Width: 530 hundredths-inches
Publisher: Paramount
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2008-08-26
Running Time: 110 minutes
Studio: Paramount
Theatrical Release Date: 2007
Product Description:
Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 08/26/2008 Run time: 90 minutes Rating: R
Customer Reviews:
The future world will watch, 2008-10-23
"Chicago 10" is the best documentary I have ever seen of the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention protest. That I'm aware, it's also only the second movie of the Chicago 7+1 trial, which grew out of the U.S. government's attempt to justify the use of excessive force against convention protesters. Counterproductively for the government, the trial immortalized the eight defendants and their two lawyers for which this movie is named.
I've never seen most of this filmed protest footage. At last, there is enough original 1968 material organized in one movie, to visualize the Chicago physical situation experienced by perhaps 40,000 people on all sides. The documentary is presented by sequential intercutting of trial transcript and recreation video animations, with 1968 actuality films, TV, radio, and audio recordings. Historians can now see what was happening almost sequentially in several large outdoor venues.
The 1970 Chicago Seven trial transcript helps organize the original 1968 protest footage. The shockingly bloody park and street confrontation scenes keep the trial's political philosophy arguments relevant and interesting.
A mixed classical and rock movie score is alien in a documentary, and some of the classical pieces are strikingly inappropriate. I recall much of the music as excessively loud. But enough of everything else worked that a defense of this overwhelming music as avant-garde art is acceptable to me.
The "Chicago 10" production device of realistic human animation solves the problem of adding visual interest to audio-only original recordings, and blends well with full voice-over animation of the trial's transcript-only original record. 1968 was an era on the cusp of transition from black-and-white to color film. The jarring alternations between the two technologies are motivated by the unfolding street action, and are a possibly unique feature of this production - mimicked even by its own animations.
I recommend this Brett Morgen documentary for its innovatively blended presentation of two difficult-to-understand perspectives of the same politically earthshaking event. I'll ask my library to purchase a copy of the DVD, but unfortunately it will not include the short piece which PBS's Independent Lens used to fill out the last 20 minutes of its time slot for "Chicago 10" on 2008-10-22.
The short piece was a 1970 British "World in Action / The Big news" report on the Chicago Seven trial. It proved to be critical to me for an explanation by Chicago Seven lawyer Leonard Weinglass of the devious 1968 Anti-Riot law under which the defendants were convicted and sentenced for a thought crime. It criminalized the crossing of state lines with the intent to threaten property or people, even if the threat was not carried out.
Though not seen in "Chicago 10", professional media has made the 1968 protesters famous for mass chanting, "The whole world is watching". Now the future world can almost eyewitness these events, brilliantly expanded beyond merely professional moving images.
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