The Conspirator

Because it has been so long, and because we've put a temporary hold on our Netflix (because I was deep in the semester and the babies drain our time), I've decided to go ahead and review a film that we saw in the theatre. Hopefully in the next few weeks we'll go back to watching our Netflix again.

The Conspirator - A Robert Redford film. How delightful. I loved A River Runs Through It. But that film like this one has a bit of a gulf between the audience and the characters. The Conspirator follows the true events of the trial of one of Lincoln's secret assassinators, a woman who owned a boarding house that John Wilkes Booth frequented. I have yet to go to the Wikipedia page to find out how much of the film is factual, but it seems like they took great care to get it all right. At least as far as the overall facts. I'm sure a lot of the personal details of the characters are fabrications, because at times it seemed either too dramatic or it was like an episode of Matlock, with James McAvoy finding little clues here and there.

So like the overall facts of the events, the film kind of wavers on the emotional tie we're supposed to feel. McAvoy we feel for, sort of. He's the golden boy lawyer back from the war, with lots of friends and the perfect girl, and he loves the Union. But he loves Justice even more. His story is supposed to be how does he deal with his love of the Union and his sense of what the Union stands for; justice. Which leads me to my real problem with the film. Mary Surrat, the woman on trial, is just a problem. She isn't a three dimensional person. She was just told to act sad the whole time and occasionally speak softly. The film never moves her beyond just the reason why McAvoy is ruining his social life for. She was just a thing.

But what is the solution to fixing that? There doesn't seem to be one, because every other piece of the film was like a cliche. (I felt like I was watching Amistad Part 2. Not that that film was a cliche, but by copying it's format this film became one.) By making her more personable, they would have just made her the cliche. So what we end up with is the doubtful feeling about her innocence. And that's actually the best part of the film, even though we probably were supposed to feel like she was innocent. Really, looking at the facts, who the heck knows if she was in on it. She probably was involved. But that's what was great about it, the question of is it worth giving even one of the killers of Lincoln a fair trial.

But the film doesn't stand on that. It gives us shadowed metaphors of our present political climate and questions about what does justice really mean. But without a real connection to the person on trial or honestly even the lawyer, we can't totally connect to those ideas.