Film Festival Reflections---The First Year

Here are some reflections from the first of what we hope will be many more Fordham Law Film Festivals:

When I was a graduate student a number of years ago, New York City movie theaters, in the days before multiplexes, routinely featured film festivals built around either a particular director, film genre, or cinematic theme. Aside from other diminished experiences that movie lovers have been forced to endure--from bad films to high prices to cardboard pop corn to the utter failure of the major Hollywood studios to produce smart, serious films--the loss of the film festival is a particularly troubling tiny tragedy.

The Fordham Law Film Festival reminded me what it's like to showcase a number of films, over a number of days, centered around a particular theme, with an audience interested in a certain subject matter, followed by post-screening discussions led by an eclectic group of speakers in an orchestrated setting where the film transcends the pure visual experience and instead becomes a communal, cerebral form of entertainment.

On each night I stood in the back of the theater and watched the audience respond to these films in ways that I'm sure could not have happened had each film been rented on DVD and viewed in the privacy of one's home entertainment center. There is something about watching a film together, in the dark, popcorn in hand, with a proclaimed purpose not just to get out of the house, but also to learn something, to deploy the medium of cinema to enlarge the mind, to engage the senses, to remind us that ideas still matter and that we have much to learn from each other in discussing something of interest that we have all witnessed together. The film festival is the modern day equivalent of the camp fire tale.

In this way, the Forum on Law, Culture, and Society, with its avowed purpose of stimulating and provoking conversations about the legal system's influence on the popular and broader culture, serves a true civic function where the life of the mind still matters and the possibility for true spiritual engagement is, indeed, possible, and desired by a public hungry for tastes that surpass the dumb-downed middle brow that passes for cultural consumption in the modern world.

"In the Bedroom"

The last film of the Festival, and, perhaps, the most morally troubling of all the movies we screened, was "In the Bedroom." After all, this was the one film that didn't have a dramatic trial scene and, in fact, had very little in the way of the law, and the legal system, functioning as backdrops and set pieces for the film.

What it did have was a horrific revenge dillemma. When the law fails, as it so clearly did for the grieving parents who were forced to co-exist in a small town with the man who murdered their son, how do we expect those who experienced injustice to go about their lives? Can they, or should they, be expected to reconcile themselves to their loss and the law's failure to meaningfully address their profound suffering? When justice returns with injustice, when the result is not just, how can people return to their former lives after having come to law seeking a remedy for their grief?

Our post-screening guests, Daniel Kornstein and Chris Cuomo, anguished along with the audience in trying to reconcile and comprehend the profound moral implications of this movie. This was perhaps the only film screened during the Festival where virtually no one left the theater after the closing credits. Everyone remained to hear and participate in the discussion.

Cuomo pointed out that as a journalist and former practicing attorney who is quite familiar with death penalty cases, he has thought a great deal about whether the surviving families of murdered victims can ever feel satisfied by what the legal system finally does with the criminal who destroyed their lives. Dan Kornstein, in fact, questioned whether people should ever look to the legal system to resolve their emotional wounds. Justice cannot restore people or make them whole again. Nothing can be done to bring back a life; every legal solution is nothing but a dignified form of revenge.

But when the legal system fails, is it wrong to seek self-help? This film presents some of the same themes as in "A Time to Kill," another one of our screened films, except that here, the parents waited patiently, hoping that the legal system would do what was right. Ultimately, however, they were forced to conclude that the legal system had failed them and their murdered son. In "A Time to Kill," the father who takes justice into his own hands does so without even giving the legal system a chance to act, mostly because he knows that the life of a black man, or black child, in the deep south, is not something the legal system has shown an impulse to protect.

Kornstein saw the film as a balancing test between reason and emotion. Cuomo reminded the audience that the philosophy against the death penalty, and, in this case, self-help, is grounded in the principle that one cannot base their decision on "what would you do if such a thing happened to your child?" If framed in such a way, the answer is always in favor of seeking and demanding revenge. Cuomo explained that such an attitude appeals to the more base of human virtues, values, and aspirations, but that the law should be guided by more nobler aspirations.

But he admitted that such a dignified and dispassionate approach is very hard to maintain when the crime is personalized and the loss is profoundly felt.

"Judgment at Nuremberg"

This film, despite its length, produced some of the most compelling and animated of audience reactions. It may have actually been the favorite film that we featured at the Fordham Law Film Festival. Most people in the audience had never seen the film before, and those who had, had never watched it in a crowded theater. Such are the consequences of living in an age of home entertainment centers and wide-screen plasma TVs.

Professor Maria Marcus from Fordham Law School relayed the fact that her father had been a Supreme Court judge in Austria during the German occupation and the decisions and sacrifices that he had to make in order to maintain his moral survival and ethical integrity.

Eli Rosenbaum, the director of the Office of Special Investigations, a division of the United States Department of Justice, explained the way in which his office still prosecutes and deports Nazi war criminals who are located within the United States and are then subjected to deportation proceedings. Many people in the audience were surprised to learn that such cases are even still handled by the United State government. Rosenbaum lamented that major newspapers, for the most part and for various unaccountable reasons, do not feel that these stories of justice finally served merit being brought to the public's attention.

As for the film, both Rosenbaum and Marcus commented on what seemed to be the realistic presentation of documentary evidence and the legal issues that the Nuremberg courts faced. But the central theme of the film was the range and scope of legal responsibility owing to the crimes of the Nazis. After all, in this film, the judgment was against the judges who enabled the Nazis to engage in such barbaric, dehumanizing acts. These were men who wore robes and wrote legal decisions that justified and supported what they Nazis did. They did not carry guns or actually do any of the killings. But in following the law, and in failing to strike down immoral laws, they were ultimately found complicit in the crimes of the Nazis as if they were accomplices to the crimes.

Yet, should enablers we held responsible in the same way as front-line perpetrators?

"A Time to Kill"

Our screening of "A Time to Kill," with post-screening guests, criminal defense attorney, Benjamin Brafman, and John Jay College professor, Delores Jones-Brown, provided yet another fascinating discussion, this one centering on the moral dimensions of revenge.

Professor Jones-Brown pointed out that we should not fixate too much on the deep south aspects of the film. To her mind, this kind of circumstance--a black man faced with an unsympathetic jury-- could easily have taken place in the north. Brafman pointed out that when he successfully represented one of the Italian defendants in the Bensonhurst case in the 1980s, he faced this exact same problem--a jury predisposed to convict a group of Italian teenagers who murdered a young black man who paid the ultimate price of being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Brafman said that he felt that "A Time to Kill" was the best movie about the legal system that he has ever seen. He thought it was realistic, and compelling, and captured so many themes that a practitioner must confront whenever dealing with what appears to be an impossible case. But Brafman also said that the film's closing argument--the defense lawyer's summation-- too blatantly implored and encouraged the jury to ignore the law and acquit the defendant because they knew, in their hearts, that what he did in killing the two men who had raped his young daughter was morally correct. And that faced with the same circumstance, they, too, might have done the same thing. Brafman said that this overt display of juror nullification is typically appealable. A lawyer can essentially ask the jury to ignore the law and vote their conscience, but he or she cannot do so as explicitly as the defense lawyer did in the film to such dramatic Hollywood effect.

So, is there a time to kill, or is murder murder no matter what the complexity of the circumstance that led to the ultimate killing?

Loss, Apology and Civility: The Problem of A Civil Action

“How can you even begin to compare what you’ve lost to what we’ve lost?”

The plaintiff families in A Civil Action have experienced a loss for which there is no remedy, legal or otherwise: the loss of a child. When true healing is impossible, though, people still need to at least try to find something to diminish their grief. The Woburn families turned to Jan Schlictmann and through him the legal system, seeking an apology, hoping for an explanation of why they underwent their horrible ordeal.

At the start of the fim, Schlictmann speaks the language of money, supposedly the tongue of the civil courts—“a dead child is worth the least of all.” Clearly, this sentiment is in fairly direct opposition to the emotional truth that nothing is more devastating than the loss of one’s child. The court is no place to find emotional healing at the beginning of A Civil Action, and this does not change at the end of the film. While Mrs. Anderson seems to be partly soothed by the EPA’s sanctions and the cleanup plan, neither she nor any of the other plaintiffs have been allowed to tell their story, and no one has come to her door to apologize.

When people are harmed, they want someone to make it right. The legal system has its calculus of reparation: a million for the medical bills, ten million for the pain and suffering. The soul has no interest in playing that numbers game; the soul wants an embrace, an outlet, the truth. But the legal world’s concept of apology, of healing, is a check and a nondisclosure agreement. Indeed, as Facher says to Schlictmann, “[A] courtroom isn't a place to look for the truth.” During last night’s panel discussion, Judge Chin seemed to disagree with Facher’s sentiment, and opined that by the time a civil case comes before him the plaintiff is, in fact, looking for money. This strikes me as most unfortunate; a settlement agreement will probably never include an apology, but a judge could force one as a sort of injunctive relief following a trial. It would be perhaps a better, more emotionally truthful system, if cases ‘about money’ settled and cases where the story must be told find their way to the courtroom.

Additionally, during the discussion Jack Ford stated that his daughter, currently a medical student, is being taught to apologize for any errors, despite the warnings of malpractice insurers. Perhaps the answer to the problem of runaway medical malpractice premiums and the real path to the ‘tort reform’ for which politicians and commentators bang their drums is simpler than anyone could have thought. Perhaps healing won’t be sought in a courtroom if we are allowed to speak, allowed to tell each other our stories and apologize, allowed to be civil instead of Civil.

"The Accused" and its lingering questions

"The Accused" inspired yet another round of interesting conversations between our esteemed guests and the attending audience on the third night of our Film Festival.

The main point seemed to be about the way in which victims in the criminal justice system are unrepresented and so often unheard as they make their way through the cold, maze-like machinery of justice. The indignity and disrespect of the plea bargain process, especially in cases involving violent sexual crimes, results in victims feeling dismissed and their pain trivialized. The fact is: A rape is quite different from reckless endangerment, and the legal system's impulse to imprison offenders for crimes they didn't do in order to assure that they will not escape imprisonment altogether--even at the expense of truth, even at the expense of giving victims their day in court to tell their stories of pain and victimization--is at the center of this film and what led to the most interesting, if not heated, exchanges between our panelists.

Roz Myers argued stridently that victims of sexual crimes are unlike other victims and should therefore be treated differently. The idea that they are often deprived of participating in their own case and not consulted as to whether a plea bargain will or should be offered is thoroughly dehumanizing and leaves the victim bitter about her experience--one in which the truth of what happened to her, and her desire to speak to it, is bargained away in favor of a more efficient legal resolution.

Joel Seidemann believed that it is his duty to protect society from future crimes as much as it is to serve the victim's wishes. Roz Myers said that the idea that the state is a victim in a case of rape when it is so clear that the actual victim is the only real victim underlines the problem that the film presents. Indeed, the victim learned about the plea bargain no sooner than anyone else--while she was watching television.

But there are still some questions left unanswered. Why shouldn't the bystanders have been punished, too? Why does the film make a distinction between the bystanders who cheered versus the bystanders who simply nursed their beers? There is a sense in the film that the victim would have felt reconciled to the result even if the offenders had not ultimately been punished, simply because she was given a day a court to tell her story to a jury and the outside world. Is that a likely attitude for most victims?

Gaines and Friedman---Two Nice Guys Who Once Played Angry Men

Last night's screening of "12 Angry Men," followed by the post-screening conversation with Broadway Tony-nominated actors Boyd Gaines and Peter Friedman, led to many insights about the film and the legal system.

Boyd spoke quite eloquently about how the Broadway production coincided with the most recent presidential election, and how the film, and the Broadway play, is really about doubt--reasonable doubt and otherwise, and why having doubt is not such a bad thing. After all, juror number 8's doubt over the guilt of the accused is what drives the film forward, and without that doubt, the accused would have been found guilty and ultimately executed. Yet, the last presidential election seemed to focus on how important it is to always be resolute, firm, and unwavering. The film, and the play, reminds us that reasonable doubt provides a check against impulsive decision-making, magnified by the presumption of guilt that comes from having been arrested and indicted by the state.

Here, too, Boyd pointed out that despite the presumption of innocence, the fact is, most jurors believe in the opposite presumption--that if the state has arrested you and devoted its resources to finding you guilty, the presumption is that you probably are guilty. In fact, in most cases where the preliminary vote is 11 to 1 in favor of finding the accused guilty, it is the rare jury that will overturn its own initial convictions and find the accused not guilty.

We discussed why the 12 men are angry, why there were 12 men and no women or people of color, and whether the film and its dramatic tension would have been different had the initial vote titled toward innocence rather than guilt?

Peter was interested in the complexity of having 12 men, confined within tight quarters, pacing like animals and irritated with one another, all required to be in movement even when other actors are speaking, essentially going over the same evidence, and yet how dramatic this all feels, how emotionally complex an experience it is, not unlike the charged atmosphere of a jury room itself.

Another idea that interested Peter was the overt expressions of prejudice toward the accused that the audience gets to see and hear, how unapologetic it is until the jurors finally have heard enough, and they finally censure juror number 10 by turning their backs on him.

Christopher Buckley at the Fordham Law Film Festival

As expected, Chris Buckley was smart, witty, and charming as our first post-screening guest at the inaugural Fordham Law Film Festival. He appeared in conversation following the screening of "Thank You for Smoking," the film based on his novel of the same name.

Chris said a number of interesting things.

First, he received the idea for the novel by watching a smooth and silky female lobbyist for the tobacco company appear on a television news program. He sought her out and discovered that she smoked as gracefully as she looked on television, but that she was no libertarian idealogue; she simply was paying her mortgage by representing the tobacco industry zealously and faithfully.

Second, Chris thought that the film was fairly faithful to his novel and captured many of the same themes, although the father-son relationship was heightened in the film, and enabled the film to slightly deepen the moral ambiguity of the novel by calling into question whether an unscrupulous lobbyist on behalf of a toxic product can also be a good role model for his son.

Third, Chris had many interesting things to say about the ubiquity of "spin" in our contemporary culture, and how we are endlessly exposed to it--whether in our political discourse or in the culture we consume.

To Do: Fordham Law Film Festival Starts Friday

This Friday, October 20, at 7:30 PM the First Annual Fordham Law Film Festival kicks off with a screening of Thank You For Smoking at Fordham Law's McNally Amphitheatre.

To order tickets and obtain more information, direct your browser to the Festival website by clicking here!

Outside coverage of our Festival:
Timessquare.com: Link
This Week in New York: Link
Independentfilm.com: Link
The Reeler: Link

Film Adaptations of Novels

I wonder whether Christopher Buckley likes the film version of his novel, THANK YOU FOR SMOKING even though, as a film, it invariably leaves out so much of the bite and plot of his wonderfully satiric story. Does he think this adaptation is faithful to the book? This raises the question that all lovers of fiction face whenever one of their favorite books is adapted into a film: Is the book better, and if so, should we just accept the fact that a film is simply going to tell the story of the novel in a different way--more visual, less nuanced, and more dependent on the directed eye of the filmmaker than on the freestyle wanderings of the imagination.

This same question applies to some of the other films in the Festival--specifically, "A Time to Kill," "A Civil Action," and "In the Bedroom."

Link: A related essay previously published in The Forward.

Forum Guest: Christopher Buckley, Author of Thank You For Smoking

Here are some links so that you can explore the work of Christopher Buckley, who will join us October 20 as we open the Film Festival with a screening of the film Thank You For Smoking, adapted from his novel of the same title.

Wikipedia entry, with biographical and bibliographical information:
Link

Amazon.com's stock of Buckley's works:
Link

Internet Movie Database (IMDB) entry for Thank You For Smoking:
Link

Please comment if you know of any other useful resources!

Forum Topics for the Film Festival

Here are a sample of post-screening conversation topics for each of the films featured at the Film Festival:

"Thank You For Smoking": Many jobs require conduct that do not violate the law but yet, in many ways, depend on immoral behavior to achieve success. Why is it that the law so often tolerates behavior that is clearly immoral but yet is ultimately lawful? Shouldn't the standards be the same?

"12 Angry Men": Would the film be less or more dramatic if the jurors initially believed that the accused was innocent and then, in their angry deliberations, ultimately found him guilty?

"The Accused": What statement does this film make about the process and moral legitimacy of plea bargains? Why is it that the prosecutor believed that making sure that the accused were sent to jail should have been enough for the victim, and what does the prosecutor ultimately learn about what victims really need and want from the criminal justice system?

"A Time to Kill": Is there such a thing as a time to kill, or is vengeance and revenge never permissible on either moral or legal grounds?

"A Civil Action": What does this film say about the limitations of money as a solution to a civil lawsuit?

"Judgment at Nuremberg": Why were the judges during the Third Reich prosecuted as if they themselves had committed crimes against humanity? Is complicity the same thing, legally and morally, as the direct involvement in mass murder? Should it be?

"In the Bedroom": How does the legal system expect crime victims to go home and live their lives when the law fails to do what is just and allows the guilty to go free?