Marshall and the Movies

Is it possible to watch a movie about 12 men whose names and backgrounds we don’t know and be completely riveted?  In 2010, we’d be inclined to say no.  But back in 1957, Sidney Lumet showed that it was possible with his film “12 Angry Men,” and because it is so unconventionally simple, it has become a classic.

Twelve white male jurors are left to decide the fate of a Puerto Rican teenager accused of killing his father with a switchblade.  In a hot, stuffy jury room in the heat of summer, the men are interested reaching a verdict quickly and getting out.  All but one, Juror #8, as we know him, thinks the boy his guilty.  The evidence isn’t totally incriminating, and this juror, played with integrity by Henry Fonda, objects to voting guilty simply because the suspect fits the bill.

And over the course of 90 minutes, which is practically real time, he begins to plant the seed of doubt in the minds of the other jurors.  They go step by step through the evidence, showing all the different ways that it could have been misconstrued.  One by one, they begin to see things in a different light, although it takes longer for some to challenge their assumptions of guilt and innocence.

I chose “12 Angry Men” to be the first entry into my monthly “Classics Corner” series because of how inspiring it really is.  We all like to believe that we are good people, and that when we are thrust into a murky moral situation, we would do the right thing.  In short, we all want to think that we can be juror #8.  But in reality, the odds of finding someone like him out there is more than one in twelve nowadays.  As movies like “Crash” have shown us in recent years, we aren’t as upright as we think we are, and prevailing racial and social assumptions still run rampant in our consciousness.  But like Superman without cape, Juror #8 is a true American hero, representing all the values that we hope we have.