Yesterday's Movies

Before watching the movie:

I’m often going into these movies wishing I knew more, but I never really felt like I needed to know more than “heated jury debate”. Everyone is frustrated because they’re locked in the room until they’re unanimous and they can’t come to an agreement.

This doesn’t seem like the kind of idea that came to life as a movie script, but much more like a play. The characters are literally locked in one room and have to talk until they come to a resolution. So I’m a little surprised to find that it was not based on a stageplay, but on a television play. That’s a format that doesn’t really exist anymore, and I’m sure if this movie didn’t already cast a long shadow, it wouldn’t gain traction today.

After watching the movie:

Upon the end of a hearing arguments in the case of an 18-year old ethnic boy from the slums accused of murdering his father and so facing a mandatory death penalty if convicted, the white men of the jury are locked into the jury room to deliberate with the reminder that their verdict must be unanimous, and they must only return a guilty verdict if the case has been proven beyond reasonable doubt. Eager to get out of the hot room and on with their lives, eleven of the jurors are prepared to vote guilty, but Juror Number 8 feels it’s inappropriate to deal so casually with a boy’s life and has some doubts on the facts of the case. The other jurors, astonished that there could be any ambiguity in such an open and shut case, agree to re-litigate the points of the prosecution with him, while Juror 8 asks simple questions that not only expose the faults of the case, but also the differences between and faults of the other jurors. As they go over the evidence, slowly the other men begin to understand 8’s doubts and find their own questions about what seemed so certain just a little while ago.

I suppose this counts as a courtroom drama entirely by virtue of the fact that there aren’t enough stories set within a sequestered jury to have their own genre, and likely most of those are references to this movie. Courtroom drama is pretty popular but I can’t think of many examples where the story actually happens entirely within the court, so it’s certainly a commendable feat to tell the facts of the case entirely within what’s basically a conference room and still be interesting. At least as much of that is a credit to the camera work alongside the writing and performance. I didn’t detect specifically what was being done to raise the feeling of being under pressure (shots moved from enhancing the size of the room to getting very tight and closed in), but I can say that I was only put off by jarring camera choices in one scene with some close ups that felt out of place.

A lot of the problems with the case seem like they should have come out in the trial, but they do discuss that there are a lot of reasons why a defense attorney, especially a public defender, might not put forward the best case. The incident with Juror 8 finding an identical knife that was supposedly almost unique is certainly going beyond the scope of what a jury is allowed to do (supposedly a juror is allowed to ask through the foreman for more qualification of an assertion but it seems like a really delicate process), and some of the points lean a bit too much on conjecture, but I still believe the jurors are justified in determining at least that the charge was not proven, which is not itself a verdict that was on the table. The plot also dances close to the controversial idea of nullification, which is that while a jury is supposed to decide on the facts, there’s no penalty for delivering a different verdict if they don’t think the outcome of what they actually think would be right, like a jury that objects to a mandatory death sentence for an 18 year old first offender having the option to say not guilty to avoid enabling state injustice.

The script is careful to talk around ethnicity. I’m fairly certain the accused was Latino but for quite a long time in Hollywood one kind of tan skin was interchangeable with another. The characters only ever discuss “coming from the slums” and “that kind of people”, which would allow you to imagine almost any kind of minority if we hadn’t been shown the fear in the boy’s face when the jury retired. I was a little surprised that while ardent bigotry was one of the last holdouts (most of the jurors come in with prejudice but only one is utterly resistant to reason), he’s more vulnerable to peer pressure and able to be shamed out of it than the juror who is bringing personal baggage. It does make sense that the only thing that can make someone more stubborn than “that kind are all alike” is seeing your own failures reflected back at you.

A lot of the superlatives at this movie’s feet don’t seem to fit, but mostly because the movie doesn’t fit the molds those superlatives are based on. This is a compelling and important piece of writing. Is it a masterful courtroom procedural? A story of a lone juror’s heroism? I’m not sure about any of that. But it’s weighty social drama, and deserves a place among the movies that should be experienced as exemplary in the art form.