Yippie-ty Do Daa! What a Wonderful Riot Today!

   

Chicago 10, a re-telling of the 1968 Democratic Convention riots and the subsequent trial, is - quite simply - the best documentary I've seen this year.

    A brimming and provocative amalgam of archival footage, audio recordings, actors reading court transcripts and animation, it follows in the footsteps of The Kid Stays in the Picture and Jessica Yu's recent documentaries (In the Realms of the Unreal and Protagonist) in pushing the boundaries of the medium.         
    Here's a documentary with a palette as rich as any feature film and an acidic sense of story telling that keeps us on edge; the director doesn't allow the action to trundle along, unfolding sequentially. He thrusts us straight into the middle of the trial, which serves as a conduit to revisit the riots, peppering along the way animated stand-up performances and radio call-ins by the various members of the Chicago 10.      The animated incarnations of of Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and their cohorts tower over us as though we're a young child wandering through the courtroom.
    Their faces looked rotoscoped, but their limbs move with an artificial heaviness, as if they're models out of an airplane safety video. In a way this makes sense, as what unfolds during the trial (and it's taken straight from the transcripts) seems totally detached from reality; our justice system never looked more shameful and myopic.
    Suffice to say, the curmudgeonly judge, whose jowls hang from his face like a bulldog's, is so one-sided in his vituperation of the Chicago 8, that Abbie and his other Yippies anticipate and musically recite with the judge's every "objection overruled."
    Abbie and the other Yippies, as they call themselves, have resigned themselves to their likely conviction for inciting a riot, and their main goal during the trial is to destroy the court's authority however they can.
    Yet the hilarity of their hijinks and their ability to point out the court's absurdity takes a darker turn, when Bobby Seale, a Black Panther unfairly charged in the case, demands to exercise his right to defend himself. What ensues is a scene we've become all too familiar - a government overstepping its bounds, literally shackling its citizens, in the name of security and justice.
    As outrageous as the trial was, it's mostly a conduit for the film to explore the riots themselves, for which there is an amazingly comprehensive library of archival footage. And it's fantastic footage at that - we see bloodied faces, we're surrounded by tear gas, we even see the face of police officers with a glazed look in their eyes, perhaps shocked themselves at what they have done.
    Yet perhaps what's most brilliant about the film is that it doesn't succumb to the cliche of wrapping this package in 60s nostalgia - too often movies like this are little more than nostalgic junk food for baby boomers to reminisce about the days before they stopped caring about anything but their retirement funds.
    Instead, the soundtrack is highlighted by Rage Against the Machine and Eminem; it's clear this is a film about today as much as it is about the convention.
    Today, just as it was then, our country is engaged in an unpopular war, one that was started under seriously dubious justifications - yet why isn't there the same level of anger and outrage as there was in Chicago in 68?
    Why aren't we organizing our own marches through the cities? Why aren't we fucking mad as hell?
    I think it's in part due to the fact the country was united behind the Iraqi War when it began. And, frankly, if our friends were being drafted and killed instead of high school drop-outs from Kansas, we'd probably be a lot more outraged.
    After seeing Chicago 10, it made me want to get unruly. It made we want to show the government and the powers that I'm not afraid. Of course, I actually haven't done anything since then.
    At the end of the day, I think that's it. We're too comfortable. We're too afraid of risking that comfort to really take a stand. We bitch and complain, but when push comes to shove most of us wouldn't have been willing to use our vacation days to travel to Chicago and protest back in '68.
    You can say many things about the Yippies in Chicago 10 - that they were provocateurs, that they indulged in self-aggrandizement, that their beliefs amounted to little more than anarchy.
    But at least they weren't afraid.