Robert Redford’s Accidental Anti-Obama Narrative
The two big questions posed to movie goers this month are: “Who is John Galt?” and “Who is Mary Surratt?”
The former query should be familiar to devotees of Ayn Rand‘s Atlas Shrugged, but the latter will likely cause a shrug or two. Surratt’s legal case in the wake of the Lincoln assassination is the focus of The Conspirator, director Robert Redford’s latest politically charged drama.
Surratt was swept up in a government sting following the assassination, but her connection to the crime wasn’t immediately certain. Redford uses that ambiguity to revisit the U.S. legal system’s promise to assume even those accused of horrific acts are innocent until proven guilty.
And, as Redford and his film see it, using military tribunals to find those answers betrays the country’s core principles. It’s a safe bet he didn’t imagine his film would hit theaters shortly after President Barack Obama gave the A-OK for such trials to address terrorists in American custody.
It’s one reason, perhaps, the otherwise sturdy film isn’t receiving the kind of critical raves often associated with left-of-center dramas. Seen from a neutral perspective, the film marks Redford’s best directorial effort since 1994’s Quiz Show.
The Conspirator opens with two Union soldiers comforting each other after a bloody battle. The action jumps ahead two years, and one of those wounded men has recovered and now practices law.
Capt. Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy) no longer fights on the battle field, but he’s called into service all the same to defend a woman accused of conspiring to kill the president.
Mary Surratt (Robin Wright in a quietly haunting performance) sure as heck seems guilty. The men who killed Lincoln and tried to slay both the country’s Secretary of State William H. Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson stayed at Surratt’s boarding house for weeks before the tragedy.
Surratt’s son, John, had recently befriended the vile Booth and fled after the assassination.
Aiken assumes Surratt is guilty, but the more he learns about her case and witnesses the bullying prosecution, the less sure he becomes.
I disagree with frequent PJM reviewer John Boot on the merits of Redford’s new movie. From my perspective, The Conspirator marks a return to form for Redford, whose directorial career suffered a crushing blow with his boring, pedantic Lions for Lambs four years ago. Redford stages the Lincoln assassination with great care, maximizing the event’s shock value without dipping so much as a toe into the realm of exploitation.
The film itself is handsomely appointed, the period details nailed down so efficiently the modern world never threatens to break the spell.
“The Conspirator’s arguments regarding modern military tribunals are ultimately an apples and oranges discussion. The terrorists at Guantanamo Bay aren’t, for the most part, American citizens, so they shouldn’t automatically gain all the rights therein.”
Ya think? Military tribunals seemed to be fine for the German war criminals at Nurenberg after World War II ended, so why isn’t it good enough for the killers behind 9/11 and all of the other foreign terrorists at Gitmo, especially the ones captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan? The far left never seems to want to answer that question. The Civil War was a very different subject and by NO means applies to the current situation at Guantanamo Bay. Context is everything and you really can’t apply 21st century standards to a war that ended in 1865.
As far as I know, there are no American citizens at Guantanamo Bay. If there are, then they should obtain a regular jury trial which is their right as an American citizen. Even that kid from California who was convicted of fighting for the Taliban was given a jury trial in a civilian court. Why? Because he was an American citizen. American citizenship still IS worth something and it’s something the killers at Guantanamo Bay do NOT have.
The story that’s seldom told about the War of Southern Seccession is the virulent hatred of white people on the part of the radical Republicans. Just as today Leftism is nothing more than a pretext for destroying American society and Western Civilization, Reconstruction was merely a pretext for subjugating white people in the conquered territories. Giving freed blacks voting rights would’ve been defensible as ‘justice’, but Reconstruction went beyond that to disenfranchising whites (as well as making the practice of any profession by white men all but impossible). The obvious boot-on-neck nature of Reconstruction was the necessary and sufficient cause of the Ku Klux Klan and similar pro-white groups in the South. Mary Surratt was guilty more of being a white Marylander (a slave State, remember) than of any conspiracy. Lincoln’s assassination was so destructive to the South because Lincoln was not a Radical Republican, but was able to keet them on a short leash. Actually, I see the Radical Republicans as being an early example of the New England Leftists of the 20th Century. Just on that basis alone, the Confederacy was a good idea.
Jacobite, I’m a Southerner from Alabama and can say you’re getting close to the line of being a Confederate sympathizer. Look, there is no doubt that Lincoln would have been the best friend the South ever had after the war, and Booth was dumb a#$ for killing him. However, let’s not forget that the most important “State Rigth” the south was trying to protect was to keep and own slaves, so I would say that if anyone was being subjugated it was the slave before and the freedman under the black codes rather than the former Confederate, “white” soldiers.
I’m a sucker for a good Civil War movie but I think I’ll pass on this one. I don’t like to encourage Redford’s excursions into political commentary. Serious movies are supposed to make you think. Redford’s political movies try to do all your thinking for you. That’s called “propaganda.”
I will never again pay for anything Redford related after I see that Soros contributes heavily to his Sundance.
Don’t ya just love when Hollyweird progressives/socialists have nothing good to say about America, big business, Republicans, Tea Party members and Sarah Palin while at the same time are busy busy busy suckling greedily at the teat of Hollywood itself; say isn’t the movie industry sort of a “big business”? Having grown up during a time when American history was actually taught in high school I know who Mary Surratt was and even know a little bit about the conspiracy to kill Lincoln. With that said I’m always keen to learn more but will not lower myself to watch a Redford film regardless of how well done it is. I’m just not going to spend my money on a progressive’s slant on history. If my interest is peaked enough I’ll do an online search and go to the library to find out more. Redford can commiserate with his leftist buddies like Ron Howard and Cameron Diaz over how miserable his film is doing while sipping thousand dollar bottles of wine in their multi-million dollar hollywood mansions. Hypocrites!!!! Thanks anyway for the review, I’ll pass. Oink oink.
Redford’s a more upscale version of our beloved New Black Panther Party featured elsewhere today here.
It differs in its particulars but it’s the same belief system.
He probably has enough money to have a chalet on the moon or at least in near Earth orbit. Surprised he hasn’t retired to such a retreat. He could fire angry rockets at the Earth like Hamas.
I have never knowingly purchased anything associated with Redford since “Butch Cassidy,” but as our small local movie house converts more of its theatres to 3-D and offers less and less adult fare, I succumbed to what has always been a siren song for me, i.e., the Civil War, and found myself driving 30+ miles in a downpour to view this movie on Saturday. I enjoyed it simply because it was a decent enough movie in light of what’s on offer these days, and I’m an addict. I’ve thought of little else since, not because of its compelling artistry or claims to historicity (which it seems to have more of than I realized at the time), but because the film proves, yet again, what a dumb blonde Redford (still) is (and having aged poorly, is sadly no longer even a pretty one).
I kept asking myself, What on earth was the man thinking? Apparently that we’d easily make the cavernous leap it takes to conflate the trampling of Mary Surratt’s habeas corpus rights with the “plight” of Gitmo detainees, when of course there is simply no comparison. Although I knew who Surratt was from childhood, and in ignorance of the intervening scholarship to the contrary, remembered her as someone who had most likely been innocent and therefore wrongly hanged, unlike some critics, I thought she was portrayed as someone who was definitely guilty, if not of conspiring to commit murder, certainly of aiding and abetting persons who did, and thus deserving of substantial prison time up to and including life, if not outright hanging. So I was doubly confused about what message Redford was attempting to convey in the film. And for what it’s worth, I didn’t see Aiken becoming convinced of her innocence either; but rather saw him as coming to appreciate in an emotional way why a vigorous defense of every accused person undergirds all rights in a free society . Again, something upheld in both our military and civil courts. So except for the plug he manages to get in for WaPo (noting before the credits that Aiken left the law and became its first city editor) his movie largely fails as propaganda, though it does serve to demonstrate “how limited [Redford] is,” to borrow his recent cut at Sarah Palin. And on that basis, some might find it enjoyable.
Actually, my use of “trampling” is a very poor choice of words in describing what happened to Mary Surratt. “Suspension” would have been more accurate, which only adds to my thesis that Redford’s blurring of distinctions confuses and weakens his attempts at messaging in the film, given that the suspension of habeas corpus is held to be both legal and prudent in times of war, not only in our country but in many other democracies, and the movie takes pains to point out more than once that the opposing armies are still engaged in combat! (Which certainly suggests to me that Redford has never borne arms for the US—something which, in his case, might have made all the difference—more’s the pity.)
So you’re saying that Redford does NOT claim that Mrs. Surratt was innocent and might have been exonerated if she’d had a civilian trial? That’s weird.
That’s what’s kept me chewing on it all this time!
At least for me, this movie certainly qualified, far more than most, as one of those “powerful ambiguous stimuli,” aka a Rorschach, and so my interpretation is probably even more subjective than these things naturally are. Coupled with the deliberately managed lighting (can it be called film noir if it’s not a 20th century detective story?) which doubtless enhanced the movie’s ability to induce an almost fugoid state (at least in me), I was instantly hooked by the film and progressively drawn in deeper and deeper, not unlike a hypnotic trance. I just know there was not one shot of pure, clean sunlight in the entire film, and the etiolated, eerily wan light that did appear, often clotted with dust motes, created an oppressive and ominously foreshadowing “presence” all its own. All of which is only by way of acknowledging that you’re probably getting far more of me than Redford here! Or as the saying goes, “people take from a book what they bring to it.”
This was made starkly clear to me when I double checked for a fully-explicated legal meaning of the term “habeas corpus” (a phrase that’s always been creepily amusing to me because of its similarity to the words with which Edgar Cayce (the so-called “Sleeping Prophet,” who performed usually health-related “readings” in a trance state) apparently signaled his descent into a deeper level of consciousness: “We have the body.” When I went to confirm my unstudied, mostly osmotic concept of the term, the first Google hit seemed really promising, until I quickly realized the obvious agenda the folks responsible for the site were pumping into what I had briefly hoped would be an authoritative, factual reference site. I moved on quickly, thinking of how many “innocents” are probably mistaking such propaganda for objective fact. And for THOSE people (probably the majority of whom are under 30, and/or left-leaning), the movie might work as I am assuming Redford intended. Of course, my basic assumption here could be totally off the mark. It’s just that in my stubbornly –opinionated view, it’s not. About all I can say for sure is that after exposure to the above-mentioned site, I was glad the movie’s distribution was so “limited.”
Saw the movie which, if you choose to ignore the moralizing, was okay. But was it historically accurate? There are some leaps and omissions used to make the point here and cast M.Surratt as a victim of revenge and executed for political expediency. According to different historical accounts, this was not the case. She was clearly guilty of harboring known confederate operatives, her son was a confederate courier (read: spy) and apparently did drop off a package from Booth to her tavern while her defense stated she was there to collect a debt. And, of course she didn’t identify a known conspirator (conveniently left in the shadows by Redford) from close-up and then the defense came up with the poor eyesight issue.
One key omission by Redford was that In the end the evilly portrayed military tribunal found her guilty but the majority signed a letter asking that she be spared the death penalty. Acknowledging the military as showing compassion and opposing her execution would have ruined the whole purpose of the movie in Redford’s eyes so he chose to simply leave it out. Amazing, yes?
President Johnson either ignored or didn’t see the clemency request (his side of the story) and signed her execution order.
Interesting bit of info – I had forgotten about that clemency request. Brings up the question of whether Surratt would have gotten a fair trial (by our standards) in a civilian court. Women were regarded differently back then. If I remember correctly, a lot of people other than the prosecutors felt sympathy for her and objected to all the “suffering” and “indignities” she went through during her imprisonment. The idea of hanging her was repugnant to many.
So would a civilian judge and a jury of her peers really have imposed a sentence appropriate to a conspirator? Or would have hanged the rest but given her a slap on the wrist because she was female? Maybe the military court really did render better justice.
One last odd insight that Redford certainly did not intend: He painted the liberal- minded constitutional moral authority as a blowhard coward. Surratt’s initial counsel, former Attorney General Reverdy Johnson played by Tom Wilkinson, bailed out as Surratt’s lawyer claiming that she would not get a fair trial with a southern lawyer. Convenient thinking, yes?
Reverdy Johnson also hit the road at a critical time in this film, right before her execution, telling Frederick Aiken (McAvoy) that he had business elsewhere to attend to. More convenient thinking? So the liberal mouthpiece of the film – the moralizing alter-ego of Mr. Redford, in the end washed his hands of the whole mess and dumped it on an untested lawyer who was sure to fail as he galloped out of town toward greener pastures.
That’s a good point, Bugs.
As the movie notes in another postscript just before the final credits, Surratt’s sorry-ass excuse for a son (obviously my words, not RR’s) was captured 16 months later and got off Scott free , when a jury composed of both northerners and southerners in his civil trial could not reach a verdict. And this IS heartbreakingly poignant. But in no way does it confer either de facto innocence or retroactive absolution or immunity on his mother for the material support she provided to the men who murdered Abraham Lincoln! (Still more fuzzy “logic.”) I guess the only way I see the movie “working” as a coherent argument in favor of civil trials for the Gitmo detainees is if you subscribe to the Kool-Aid crowd’s entire litany of beliefs. Based strictly on what was presented in the movie, I don’t think Mary Surratt should have been hanged. Possibly life, or perhaps even something more like “25 to life,” with possibility of release or commutation as time went on. Without having seen the evidence, who can really say. And if the depiction of the conduct of the prosecutor and the military panel was based on actual transcripts, it was outrageously biased and improper. But to assume that all such trials, prosecutors, and juries in this country in the present day are equally corrupt is the stuff of drug-induced Manson-Cult thinking. Again, how can this possibly be what RR meant to convey?
Above comment is more obsessing from Mayberry Lady. Forgot to log in.
Redford did not ignore that she was sentenced to life; he made it look like Stanton, who was livid, either held the recommendation or went to Johnson and convinced him to overrule the tribunals’ recommendation.
Stanton also played the villan again, when he got Johnson to ignorrd the Judge’s writ of habeas corpus, giving Surratt a civilian trial.
It is obvious Redford is not capable of knowing the difference between foreign enemy combatants in civilian clothes and US citizens.
As for Surratt’s guilt it might be good to remember a doctor was sent to prison for the crime of treating Booth,later released for practicing medicine.
What is it with this fawning and searching for deep meaning from “people” who’s whole life is lived in make believe land and that they can “act” as something they are not.
Just don’t get it. Hollyweird crowd brings nothing other than ” celebrity status” to the table. Absolutely nothing else connected with reality.
They are supposed to be Artists – beings with superior insight into human emotions, motivations, and behavior. According to them and their friends, at least. How they’re supposed to have got that way, I don’t know.