Movies for Grownups Review The Conspirator
Movies for Grownups Review The Conspirator Movies for Grownups
Directed by Robert Redford
Rated PG-13
Runtime: 123 mins. As a director, Robert Redford likes to disassemble things. In his Oscar-winning debut, Ordinary People, he brilliantly dissected a family on the brink of collapse. More recently, in Lions for Lambs, he rather clumsily attempted to break down the workings of the military-industrial complex.
With The Conspirator, Redford is back in excellent form, meticulously breaking down the surprisingly elaborate conspiracy behind the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Historians know, but I’m not sure how many of the rest of us do, that John Wilkes Booth was only one cog in a great “decapitation plot” to destabilize the United States government in a single blood-drenched night: A coconspirator stabbed Secretary of State William H. Seward nearly to death, and another chickened out of his planned assassination of Vice President Andrew Johnson. These three, and a handful of fellow conspirators, plotted their deeds at a Washington, D.C., boarding house owned by Mary Surratt (curiously, the house still stands a block from where I write this — it’s now an Asian restaurant called Wok and Roll). The Conspirator focuses on Surratt’s culpability in the plot, and it all comes down to a familiar question: What did she know, and when did she know it?
It’s a question that never gets a satisfactory answer in The Conspirator — by design, I think. At its best the film examines the curious relationship between Suratt (an inscrutable Robin Wright) and her reluctant attorney, Frederick Aiken (an open-faced James McAvoy). As Surratt, Wright professes her innocence with at times irritating coolness. It’s easy to associate her stoic stance with sincerity, as her young lawyer occasionally does. But each time Aiken seems ready to fall headlong into unrestrained allegiance to his client, Redford does a nice job of introducing a shard of evidence, or a nagging inconsistency, that once more raises doubts. In fact, as Redford skillfully lays out both the defense and prosecution cases (much of the dialogue is taken directly from the original trial transcripts), what’s most striking for a 20th-century viewer is the quality of evidence that it was possible to collect more than a century before anyone dreamed of CSI: Miami (Can’t you just see David Caruso pushing up his Ray-Bans and muttering, “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln … how did you like the play?”).
Review The Conspirator
Redford crafts compelling courtroom drama about Lincoln assassination
Claudette Barius, The American Film Company Productions Robert Redford directs James McAvoy as attorney Frederick Aiken, a Union soldier reluctantly representing a Southern woman accused of plotting to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.Directed by Robert Redford
Rated PG-13
Runtime: 123 mins. As a director, Robert Redford likes to disassemble things. In his Oscar-winning debut, Ordinary People, he brilliantly dissected a family on the brink of collapse. More recently, in Lions for Lambs, he rather clumsily attempted to break down the workings of the military-industrial complex.
The Director Speaks
At AARP's 'Movies for Grownups' Awards, Robert Redford describes his unusual personal take on American history and how it has inspired his moviemaking.With The Conspirator, Redford is back in excellent form, meticulously breaking down the surprisingly elaborate conspiracy behind the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Historians know, but I’m not sure how many of the rest of us do, that John Wilkes Booth was only one cog in a great “decapitation plot” to destabilize the United States government in a single blood-drenched night: A coconspirator stabbed Secretary of State William H. Seward nearly to death, and another chickened out of his planned assassination of Vice President Andrew Johnson. These three, and a handful of fellow conspirators, plotted their deeds at a Washington, D.C., boarding house owned by Mary Surratt (curiously, the house still stands a block from where I write this — it’s now an Asian restaurant called Wok and Roll). The Conspirator focuses on Surratt’s culpability in the plot, and it all comes down to a familiar question: What did she know, and when did she know it?
Related
It’s a question that never gets a satisfactory answer in The Conspirator — by design, I think. At its best the film examines the curious relationship between Suratt (an inscrutable Robin Wright) and her reluctant attorney, Frederick Aiken (an open-faced James McAvoy). As Surratt, Wright professes her innocence with at times irritating coolness. It’s easy to associate her stoic stance with sincerity, as her young lawyer occasionally does. But each time Aiken seems ready to fall headlong into unrestrained allegiance to his client, Redford does a nice job of introducing a shard of evidence, or a nagging inconsistency, that once more raises doubts. In fact, as Redford skillfully lays out both the defense and prosecution cases (much of the dialogue is taken directly from the original trial transcripts), what’s most striking for a 20th-century viewer is the quality of evidence that it was possible to collect more than a century before anyone dreamed of CSI: Miami (Can’t you just see David Caruso pushing up his Ray-Bans and muttering, “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln … how did you like the play?”).