Strange Justice

Frankly, I'm pleasantly shocked that a 90s Hollywood film could be so balanced over a historic event which was so aflame with bias (the leftist hand of Oliver Stone was not involved). If you were firmly on the side of Anita Hill OR Clarence Thomas, this effort will probably not shake your faith and fandom. If, however, you thought one or both were lying, that Hill's going public about Thomas after following him from job to job didn't ring true or that Thomas' purported predilection with porn was sad, then this will probably make both seem more human. The movie deals more with the way the two "combatants" were manipulated, at first willingly, and later (especially in Thomas' case) kicking and screaming. The acting throughout is excellent, and the pacing is spry for such a talky tale. Note that when Hill and Thomas give long testimonies to the assembled (and silhouetted) senators, it takes on a stagy, out-of-body quality. In this, Thomas comes off much more convicted and intelligent while Hill sounds whiny and self-centered; this is, in my opinion, interesting as Thomas comes off as more naive in the rest of the picture while Hill is focused and sober. So which one does the movie portray at his or her worst? Neither. Instead, it's Senator Joe Biden. Mandy Patinkin, commenting as himself as the credit rolled, thought that Biden probably regrets not calling a key witness in the case more than anything else in his life. Sorry, Mandy. It was probably his well-known plagiarism before that. And certainly how poorly he's treated in Strange Justice before that, too. A good film and I recommend it.

As usual in Showtime's political dramas, "Strange Justice" dramatizes actual events just far enough to make them unconvincing but not far enough to turn them into drama. Also as usual in these half-plays or sketches, what dominates is preachy melodramatics. The central characters are almost the only ones who come across as plausibly human; the others, apart from Patinkin's spin doctor (a character for the producers and executives to admire), are reduced to stick figures. The few righteous in Sodom, the members of Hill's support group, appear stiff and phony in their "commitment", like TV anchorwomen. The bad guys, including all of Thomas's backers, are cartoons. Although Lindo's performance catches fire, the drama itself never does. Its most obvious structural fault is the choice not to dramatize the central event, the sequence of hearings. So the members of the committee, and the President, are shown in real news tapes, with the faces of the actors morphed in opposite them where necessary. The effect is transparently, transcendently false. These tapes, the we-happy-few discussions in the Hill camp, and the scenes of Thomas's grooming and training never coalesce into a whole. In the Thomas scenes the Patinkin character becomes a kind of public eye and Greek chorus, a master manipulator of opinion with the canniness to see through others' ideological posturing. I thought the film gave him too much credit, but then he's the show-biz standby, the cynic with a heart of gold. His presence would be unnecessary and even obtrusive if the film had a script that had the imagination to use what the raw material had to offer. The two leading actors (who are exceptionally well cast) appear to have got around that lack by basing their performances on the real-life figures as they came across in the real-life hearings. Taylor is not given enough time or space to show her character fully, but Lindo is, and while he doesn't have all the right speeches he has plenty of them and by playing between the lines manages to turn Thomas into a tragic hero of almost Shakespearean proportions, a man in denial of his own weaknesses who reacts by lashing out violently as everyone else. The enlargement of the real man to this scale is perhaps too obvious but is dramatically sound, and if the producers had been less concerned with the facts, as labeled to make sure we saw them in the intended light, and more concerned with the truth as they saw it, we would have got a much more persuasive and significant film.

The acting was pretty good as was the casting and editing. There was some attempt at revising history but over all was fairly accurate. What was most distracting from the quality was the ill chosen transformation of Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill. During their testimony the light suddenly changed, their notes and microphone disappeared. Anita became almost demonic at one point. Clarence took off everything above his belt except his tie, approached the senate committee and ranted for five minutes. Then suddenly the lighting went back to normal, their notes and microphone reappeared and both witnesses went back to their normal selves. I have no idea what the director was trying to communicate other than his ability to not communicate. ???+

The Supreme Court has always fascinated me. I was the only person I've known who took days off of work to stay glued to the Thomas confirmation hearings; to watch the conservatives steam-roll through the nomination of, perhaps, the least qualified nominee of the 20th century.

This film pulled me in for the first 20 minutes, but then ruined itself by overdramatising what should already be a horrifying story. There was no need to show both Justice Thomas and Ms Hill exploding during the committee hearings, though I think that the director was trying to be sympathetic to their outrage. Both actors did a fine job, they were just poorly directed.

The "behind-the-scenes" actions of the aides were refreshing, and true to my knowledge of the workings of Washington. But over-all the film left me (someone who stayed home to see it all live) cold.

I'd recommend it to anyone who doesn't remember the hearings, with the understanding that their guard needs to be up for the strange direction. Not to mention the fact that Justice Thomas and Ms Hill, in reality, handled themselves very well (with far less display of emotion) during the committee hearings. We also lose sense of the actual hearings; the demeaning behavior of the Republicans, the silence of Sen Kennedy, the exemplary leadership of Sen Biden, the cutting wit of Sen Heflin, etc.

Amusing work of fiction based on actual events (but not to closely). Several very good actors turn in fine performances, but the script is a travesty of justice. A shameful event in the nation's judicial history becomes a shameless attempt at character assassination, particularly upsetting since those too young to have watched the Thomas hearings will probably have their notions of what really happened warped. I was a lifelong knee-jerk liberal at the time of the hearings, just having a crisis where my views were changing, and the "high-tech lynching" (words surprisingly left in from the script) was enough to tip the scales, so it was a very important moment for me. Although one can't fault the production values, the movie was perpetrated by partisans trying in the best Orwellian fashion to change history into what they wistfully wish it had been, which is 180 degrees from what it was. Let's hope history does better justice to a distinguished and much-maligned jurist than this peculiar ideologist fantasy. If you thought "JFK" was sound history, you'll enjoy this one.