Well, it’s a funny ol’ world and a funny time to be thinking about American politics. And not really so much “funny ha ha”. In a random stroke of good timing I just finished watching the film Chicago Ten after hearing a piece about it on NPR’s All Things Considered a few weeks ago. It was so compelling just to listen to the bits played that I “Netflixed” the movie right away.
The movie is a documentary, but with an interesting mixture of animation and live action archival footage of the 1968 Democratic Convention protests, riots and defendents in the subsequent trial. The animation and related audio portions are based on the existing film and audio recordings of the trial itself as well as appearances by the Chicago 8 themselves, in a sort of rotoscoped look, which is quite cool. For a documentary nerd such as myself, it’s an added bonus that the dialogue in the animated portions of the film are directly taken from court records and other filmed materials.
Ultimately, like other documentaries about the turbulent late 1960s in the US, Chicago 10 reveals an intense period of change, conflict and eventually some resolution. Albeit at times, seemingly tenuous. “Netflix” it.
