"Documentary"
seems like the wrong word to describe Chicago 10; it feels more like a lost piece of
agitprop, made 40 years too late. Objective reportage is never a question: The
snarky tone and pointed editorializing obliterate any sense of even-handedness.
But for those who don't mind their history pre-seasoned with a little
phantasmagoria and a lot of sarcasm, Chicago 10 is a hugely entertaining piece of pop
fluff, as dynamic and modern as the Beastie Boys cut on the soundtrack.
Director Brett Morgen approaches the story of the 1968
Chicago Democratic Convention with the kaleidoscopic lens he brought to bear on
Robert Evans in The Kid Stays In The Picture. He uses extensive archival film
footage and interviews to set the scene, as Abbie
Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and the Youth International Party—the
"yippies"—help spark the rallies that drew thousands of young people to
Chicago's parks and streets, where they clashed with police over the week
leading up to the convention. But the film centers on the subsequent conspiracy
trial of Hoffman, Rubin, Tom Hayden, Bobby Seale, and four others, which Morgen
recreates in the Bob Sabiston computer-rotoscoping style of Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly. Actors stand in for Hoffman and
his colleagues, acting out the transcripts of the notoriously circus-like
trial, in which publicity stunts and grandstanding on both sides outweighed any
pretense of justice.
Morgen keeps the story lively and vital, in the live-action
segments as well as the animated ones; the story zips along, amid modern rock
songs, hilarious clips of well-meaning radicals talking about investing
their "semen and love vectors" into American peace, and horrifying sequences of
those same radicals being brutalized by Chicago cops. But Morgen can't resist
using the animation to add a surreal flair: Allen Ginsberg floats everywhere he
goes, in full meditative position, and when Hoffman throws a kiss to the jury, the
"camera" follows it, Roger Rabbit style. And he goes out of its way to mock the establishment
in puerile, cartoony ways, as when the late Roy
Scheider gives Judge Julius Hoffman the voice of a senile duck. (This is the
man who's shouting, "We do not allow shaking of fists in this courtroom!" He
hardly needs Morgen's help to look foolish.) At times, Morgen's intentions are
muddy; at others, they're far too stridently clear. Chicago 10 is a lot of fun, but it could stand to take its subjects a
little more seriously, if only because they themselves are so frequently goofy
that mocking them is complete overkill.