Scotty: I didn’t want to, but it was either The Conspirator or Battle of Los Angeles.
You made me sad. So very sad.
Eh, I saw it again with you, and was bored out of my mind.
Yeah, it was kind of boring, like a two hour episode of Law and Order.
Hey, Law and Order is exciting. The entire time I watching the movie I kept on thinking, “this would be so much better if Jack McCoy was in this.”
Law and Order is the same thing every single episode.
That is totally not true.
Watch a Law and Order marathon and then I dare you to tell me the distinguishing features of each episode.
I do that all the time. Until last night I had four episodes DVR’d. There was one about whether or not the DA should seek the death penalty for an 18 year old who killed a Chinese food delivery man...
I was kidding.
So, The Conspirator was about the trial of Mary Surratt (Robin Wright). For those of you who slept through U.S. History (I know at least one person who is reading this did), Mary Surratt owned the boarding house where John Wilkes Booth and company met to plan the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The movie is from the point of view of Fredrick Aiken (James McAvoy) who is assigned to represent Surratt, a task that no one else wants to do. The kicker is, which the movie spends a great amount of time reminding us of, that Surratt is a civilian being tried in a military tribunal that is headed by generals who are obviously biased. Drama ensues, blah, blah blah, CIVIL LIBERTIES!!!!!!
Ok, my main beef with The Conspirator is that it is, essentially, a courtroom drama, which I find to be terribly boring.
Watch out...
That said, it’s rant time! ::game show music:: When I heard about The Conspirator, I got excited, like really excited. I minored in Civil War Era Studies in college in a department heavily populated by Lincoln scholars and those who emphasize the War in our minor instead of the Era. I try to not get really excited about movies (just in case they suck) but I really wanted this movie to be good. Sure there’s the war element but it is focusing on a much more popular aspect of it. For goodness sakes there’s women in it whose role isn’t just to be the wife/daughter/girlfriend. Also, The Conspirator was made by The American Film Company, a production group which according to their website was “Founded on the belief that real life is often more compelling than fiction, The American Film Company produces feature films about incredible, true stories from America's past.” Now, I hold no allusions that they were going to make a completely historically accurate movie. History can be really exciting but it can also be very boring. I was ready for a little spicing up of the plot. So obviously this movie was going to be all kinds of awesome and reasonably accurate.
Except it wasn’t. It was boring, preachy and easily the most simple movie they could have made out of this story and now I’m disappointed.
The first time I saw it, it wasn’t that boring. The second time, I wanted to go to sleep. In all honestly, when there were fleshed-out characters, they were highly compelling. Mary Surratt was one of those characters. My heart gave a twang every time she cried. Aiken’s character was overly cliché in some ways (but James McAvoy looks so pretty) and starts out judgmental and then self reforms, to every one's chagrin. The prosecutor and the war department were overly villainized.
Oh, and another warning. Zoe is about to rant some more about her disappointment. But, I didn’t think this movie was that bad. Not entirely rewatchable, but still a decent film.
I think that’s really the part that gets to me, The Conspirator is not a bad movie, sure it’s boring in places but the actors are able to elevate this script to a place that, on its own, is actually quite good and props to director Robert Redford for creating a moment of genuine tension in a story with a well known ending. The hanging sequence at the end was also amazing, relying almost entirely on some very subtle acting and little dialogue.
The only thing that irked me about the acting in this film is the accents. This may be because I’m a Marylander who studied in Southern Maryland. For some reason some of the characters who are supposed to be from Maryland sound like they’re from Atlanta or Baton Rouge. Seriously, there is more than one type of southern accent; get them right.
See, the accent thing doesn’t bother me as much because I’m just used to it by now. It’s like people in entertainment believe that the only way an audience will recognize that the character is from south of the Mason-Dixon Line is if they speak in an overly stereotypical southern dialect. They all need to sound like they are Foghorn Leghorn or everyone will think they’re from California. People make the same criticism of True Blood so I almost laughed out loud when Stephen Root used the same voice in The Conspirator that he did in True Blood.
Also, Fredrick is supposed to be from New England. There is no way he should sound as generic as he does in this movie.
Accents or no, I was just excited that one of the like three famous Marylanders of the Civil War Era was up on the screen, and it was the one with the best name, Reverdy Johnson. Seriously, I want to name my next cat Captain Reverdy.
So, now we need to talk about an important aspect of the film
SYMBOLISM!
Yes, that this movie is essentially an allegory for the present day Guantanamo Tribunals. It hammers home how important civil liberties are and how important it is that we don’t forsake them in times of crisis. It’s not so subtle.
Seriously, in the courtroom scenes, they make the shots all hazy to show how blurred the justice of this trial is going to be.
I didn’t get that actually, I just thought it was bad cinematography.
I didn’t say it was good symbolism.
Really, the heavy handedness of the movie’s message seems to come at the expense of some of the movie’s characters and the plot. Anyone who doesn’t believe in the importance of social justice is painted as a black and white villain who is totally evil, while the protagonist gets elevated up like an untouchable hero. Edwin Stanton always appears like he’s one second away from a good ol’ Disney baddy cackle. Also, the movie is pretty much convinced from the get-go that Mary Surratt is innocent and thus, anyone that doesn’t is either portrayed as evil or ignorant.
Actually, I thought Surratt’s innocence had a level of ambiguity, which is probably why she’s my favorite character.
They say she knew about the conspirator’s plot to kidnap Lincoln which I think is the level of ambiguity you’re talking about but it’s nowhere near the level of ambiguity that existed in the real trial. Increasing the ambiguity and fleshing out the characters of the movie’s antagonists, I think, would have made a much richer, more entertaining movie. The reason Mary Surratt interests people is the question of “was she guilty or innocent” and the fact that we will really never know. The movie pretty much blows off this question and I would have liked to see the more compelling evidence proposed by each side without as much of a bias. I mean, they don’t even show the prosecution’s closing arguments because it doesn’t matter. The movie has had its mind made since the beginning, just like Mary Surratt’s judges.
That’s an interesting analogy. I wonder if they did that on purpose...probably not. So, Zoe, do you have any more rants in store for us?
None about the movie.
Good, because I have one.
What is it?
Beiber Hair
…...........
John Surratt had Beiber hair and a soul patch. Its the most ridiculous thing ever. Who thought that was a good idea? I mean, Beiber Hair!
The soul patch was kind of ridiculous.
Beiber Hair!
Ok....anyway...
Beiber Hair!
The American Film Company currently has two other movies based on historical events in development.
Beiber Hair!
The Arsenal, about John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry and Midnight Riders, about Paul Revere and co. (but not including Sybil Ludington of course).
Seriously! Beiber Hair!
Oh my God STOP IT.
This movie is set in the 1860’s. What the hell does John Surratt have Beiber hair!
Moving on, I glanced at the plot for The Arsenal and saw this sentence: “On a rainy October night in 1859, violent abolitionist John Brown and a rag-tag band of young men descends on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.” It just made me sigh since it appears instead of making movies showing off the complexity of historical events and their players, The American Film Company seems to just want to make simple stories with black and white heroes and villains. Sigh.
And Beiber Hair.
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