3/27/2023 0 Comments Utopia netflixSorkin wrote and directed The Trial of the Chicago 7, which fiddles a bit with actual historical events in service of the story. But the men didn’t conspire - and what’s more, they’ve insisted that the Chicago Police Department started the violence. The men did travel to Chicago to protest the Vietnam War. Its subject is the six-month trial of a group of men who were charged with conspiracy and crossing state lines with the intent to incite a riot in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a signature Aaron Sorkin humdinger, a courtroom drama about the past with the present on its mind. How to watch it: What the Constitution Means to Me is streaming on Amazon Prime Video. And she finishes by sparring with a teenaged debate partner about the future of the Constitution - a moment that shows the power and true purpose of real, thoughtful debate. Schreck deftly shifts between her own personal history, stories from the lives of her women ancestors, and deeply researched knowledge about Supreme Court decisions and arguments, weaving together policy, rights discourse, and lived experience. The filmed version of What the Constitution Means to Me (with direction from Won’t You Be My Neighbor’s Marielle Heller) captures that moving, angry, heartbreaking, and strangely inspiring Broadway show. Schreck wrote and starred in the play, in which she pretends to be her 15-year-old self, talking about the Constitution - at least until her youthful optimism is challenged by both her adult realism and the stories of her family’s past. Years later she recreated that experience with What the Constitution Means to Me, which garnered Tony and Pulitzer nominations during its 2019 Broadway run. When Heidi Schreck was 15, she’d travel around the Pacific Northwest for speech competitions hosted by American Legion chapters, giving extemporaneous addresses on the meaning and importance of various constitutional amendments. Watch Time for a heartbreaking story of real courage and hope I can’t think of a better theme to seek out in these trying, challenging days. Put all four together, and you start to see a portrait of America that is thoughtful, layered, and hopeful, drawing on the past to understand the present and finding something in the present to point us toward the future. But the people who made them are looking for the kernel of humanity in the midst of injustice, and in their own ways, each of them find it. They don’t traffic in myths about restoring former greatness or being our best selves. The pictures these movies paint are by no means rosy. Two are film versions of acclaimed Broadway plays another is from one of the country’s most acclaimed screenwriters and one is one of the best documentaries of the year. So while I don’t know whether it’s by design or by accident, it’s serendipitous that four movies premiering on digital services this weekend try to thread a tricky needle: seeing America for what it is, and finding hope in it anyhow. As we’re just a few weeks out from a momentous election, it’s not controversial to say that this is not the country’s shining-est moment. The land of the free and the home of the brave is exhausted, sick, anxious, distracted, and at war with itself. Look, I think a lot of us can agree that America isn’t looking great these days.
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