Chicago 10 (film)

Chicago 10: Speak Your Peace is a 2007 American animated film written and directed by Brett Morgen that tells the story of the Chicago Eight. The film features the voices of Hank Azaria, Dylan Baker, Nick Nolte, Mark Ruffalo, Roy Scheider, Liev Schreiber, James Urbaniak, and Jeffrey Wright in an animated reenactment of the trial based on transcripts and rediscovered audio recordings, making the film fall in the animated documentary genre. It also contains archival footage of Abbie Hoffman, David Dellinger, William Kunstler, Jerry Rubin, Bobby Seale, Tom Hayden, and Leonard Weinglass, and of the protest and riot itself. The title is drawn from a quote by Rubin, who said, "Anyone who calls us the Chicago Seven is a racist. Because you're discrediting Bobby Seale. You can call us the Chicago Eight, but really we're the Chicago Ten, because our two lawyers went down with us."^[2]

Plot

In 1968, a group of protestors got together to protest the Vietnam War where their actions led to their arrest and trial.

Cast

• Hank Azaria as Abbie Hoffman / Allen Ginsberg
• Dylan Baker as David Dellinger / David Stahl
• Nick Nolte as Thomas Foran
• Mark Ruffalo as Jerry Rubin
• Roy Scheider as Judge Julius Hoffman
• Liev Schreiber as William Kunstler
• James Urbaniak as Rennie Davis / Richard Schultz
• Jeffrey Wright as Bobby Seale
• Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Paul Krassner
• Debra Eisenstadt as Mary Ellen Dahl / Waitress
• Lloyd Floyd as Robert Pierson / Arthur Aznavoorian / Police officer
• Leonard Weinglass as himself
• Catherine Curtin as Barbara Callender
• Chuck Montgomery as Lee Weiner
• Dave Boat as Norman Mailer, Marshal #1
• Roger L. Jackson as Marshal #2, Reporter #4, Reporter #6
• Amy Ryan as Anita Hoffman

Production

On the eve of the Afghanistan War, director Brett Morgen was spurred to create Chicago 10 in response to what he saw as the lack of active American opposition to the war. Morgen wanted to make the anti-Vietnam War protests of the 1960s resonate with contemporary youth, which influenced both the film's animation style and its anachronistic soundtrack, the latter of which features modern artists such as Black Sabbath, Rage Against the Machine, the Beastie Boys, and Eminem. The animated courtroom sequences were also informed by Jerry Rubin's description of the trial as a "cartoon show."^[3]

Release

The film premiered January 18, 2007 at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. It later premiered at Silverdocs, the AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival in Downtown Silver Spring, Maryland. The film opened in limited release in the United States on February 29, 2008. It was aired nationally on the PBS program, Independent Lens, on October 22, 2008.

Critical reception

The film received generally favorable reviews from critics. As of April 11, 2010, the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 80% of their critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 77 reviews.^[4] Metacritic reported the film had a weighted average score of 69 out of 100, based on 24 reviews.^[5]

See also

• The Chicago 8 (film)
• Chicago Seven

References

External links

• Chicago 10 at the Internet Movie Database
• Chicago 10 at Box Office Mojo
• Chicago 10 at Rotten Tomatoes
• Chicago 10 at Metacritic
• CHICAGO 10 site for Independent Lens on PBS
• Chicago 10 at Sundance.org
• Chicago 10 at Beyond Chron
• NPR's Fresh Air interviews Brett Morgen