Aaron Sorkin’s sophomore effort in the director’s chair – after 2017’s Molly’s Game – is just as compelling, erudite, and masterful as his first. The Trial of the Chicago 7 is one of the best movies of the year so far. All of Sorkin’s strengths are on display here. His screenplay is brimming with his signature style of crackling dialog. He examines with nuance and complexity mature themes like patriotic dissent, justice, and what makes American democracy function. His characters are all fully fleshed out people, not merely two-dimensional dialog delivery devices.
Read more…
The best movies about poker are often about more than the game itself. A great example is Rounders. That movie isn’t so much about turning a losing hand into a winner through the power of bluffing as it is loyalty and the limits of friendship. So, too, is screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s work rarely just about what can be covered in a plot synopsis. The 30-year veteran of stage, TV, and film writing crafted two of the best biopics of this decade with 2010’s The Social Network and 2015’s Steve Jobs. Those films are character studies that seek answers to questions concerning true genius and the uglier traits of driven and brilliant men.
Critics and audiences have often lamented Sorkin’s less deft skill at writing female characters. The women he writes are sometimes two dimensional; they serve to add overwrought hysterics or a love interest to the story. With Molly’s Game, Sorkin has challenged himself to confront this weakness. His protagonist, Molly Bloom, is as driven as the subjects in The Social Network or Steve Jobs. Her story is also as complex, fascinating, and as rewarding of a character study as anything Sorkin has ever written.
Read more...
“What exactly does it mean to be an asshole?”
That was how New York magazine writer Mark Harris boiled down Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay for The Social Network in a 2010 piece on the movie and its screenwriter. Sorkin’s past work is littered with characters that are intensely driven, successful, and can charitably be described as “difficult.” In writing for TV – most notably NBC’s The West Wing – Sorkin knew how to soften the edges of these overachievers. Yes, they could be hard to deal with, but they realized it (usually by the end of the episode), and cared enough about those around them to make amends for their behavior.
Then along came The Social Network, and Mark Zuckerberg. While ostensibly about the creation of Facebook, the movie is actually an intense character study of the website’s founder. Sorkin’s Zuckerberg was an asshole who knew it, but only cared enough to feel a little bad about it – making amends was not that character’s style. After another stint on TV with the similarly fractious Will McAvoy of The Newsroom, now Sorkin gives us Steve Jobs. From Zuckerberg to McAvoy to Jobs, something of an asshole evolution is evident. This time the asshole genius knows what he is and he doesn’t give a damn. The result of Sorkin’s writing is as compelling and multi-layered a character study as he delivered with The Social Network, with a dramatic structure as tight as Citizen Kane.
Read more...
