Heavens Fall

This movie was good overall with excellent performances from the cast and the cinematography was excellent. The script however could have been better as I would have liked it to go into more details about the other defendants but it was well written otherwise.

I had the pleasure of seeing the world premiere of Heavens Fall at the Austin's Paramount Theatre as part of the SXSW film festival. It is a powerful film about the great injustices that occurred during the infamous Scottsboro trial of nine black men accused of raping two white women in Alabama in the 1930s.

While this story has been told before in a 1976 NBC TV movie, Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys (which I haven't seen and which I suspect would be pretty difficult, if not impossible to find on VHS or DVD today) and more recently in the powerful PBS documentary, Scottsboro: An American Tragedy, it's a story worth telling again for each new generation.

A film like recent Best Picture winner, Crash, reminds us that racism still exists in our society today. A film like Heavens Fall provides historical context and reminds us of the slow progress that has been made since the days of the Jim Crow South. This film reminds me of other recent films that have reminded us of some of the other tragic episodes of past racism such as Mississippi Burning, Amistad, and, particularly, the marvelous film, Rosewood. As with all films of this genre, some events and characters have been fictionalized in an attempt to capture of the spirit of the story rather than all of the detail.

Heavens Fall features first-rate performances by Timothy Hutton as the Jewish New York lawyer who travels to Alabama to defend the 9 black men, David Strathairn as the the trial judge, and Bill Sage as the prosecutor. The movie moves a bit slowly. The lead characters, including the prosecutor, are presented as human beings taking away from the stereotyping of white southerners which is quite easy in this type of film. It's occasionally a little predictable and clichéd - something almost unavoidable with this genre. Ironically, I think that more could have been done to develop the African-American characters. The accused are not really presented in great depth and the one black character, a journalist, seems a bit extraneous to the plot of the story. Still, basically a good job is done in presenting the main characters as human beings struggling for truth and justice as they define it in a highly imperfect world.

At our world premiere screening, the director and many of the actors were present and spoke about the making of the film. Timmothy Hutton was unable to attend, but as the director and other actors were speaking to the audience, Hutton phoned into to the director's cell phone to receive loud cheers from the audience and answer a few questions via cellphone to microphone. The film was clearly a labor of love by the director and actors. I hope that it finds a distributor and is seen widely, because Americans need to see the realities of their history in order to learn from it.

Movies such as HEAVENS FALL are poignant reminders of the cruel history of this country that still makes us bow our heads in shame. The story by writer/director Terry Green is a sensitive recreation of the re-trial of an African American man (one of nine) condemned to death in Scottsboro, Alabama in 1931 for the supposed gang rape of two white women, a trial with an all-white seated jury who took only 20 minutes to deliberate and convict the young men. It is a study of racism in the South in the 1930s and while the viewer would hope that the ending is triumphant, the story quietly fades with a particle decency represented by a New York trial lawyer and a sympathetic judge who opened the door to the beginnings of seated African American jurists. It is powerful in content: it is magnificent movie making.

Samuel Leibowitz (Timothy Hutton) travels to Alabama form his offices in New York in 1933, to represent the nine condemned men after a Supreme Court ruling opened the door for a retrial. Leibowitz meets the prosecuting attorney Thomas Knight, Jr. (Bill Sage), more devoted to his potential career advancement than to his role as prosecutor, and the judge assigned to the case - James Horton (David Strathairn). Leibowitz interviews the nine condemned men and Haywood Patterson (B.J. Britt) is the first to be re-tried. Careful investigation uncovers the shaky case that convicted the men and Leibowitz, with the aid of the attorneys who pleaded the case before the Supreme Court, attempt to gain a racially mixed jury without success. Sent to cover the trial is a young reporter from Chicago (Anthony Mackie) who witnesses the racial hatred in the South first hand. His presence adds credibility to the proceedings. During the trial Leibowitz calls as witnesses the two women who made the false accusations - Victoria Price (LeeLee Sobieski) and Ruby Bates (Azura Skye) - and despite evidence clearing the nine men the trial ends in defeat. But that is only the beginning of a story that persists to this day. This is a true story about how racial hate tore the South apart in the 1930s, but it is also the story of how a few honest people tried to alter history.

The cast is uniformly excellent, with Strathairn, Hutton, Skye, and Sage giving potent performances. The climate of the times is well captured by the cinematography of Paul Sanchez, the costumes by Lisa Davis, the fine editing by Suzy Elmiger, and the simple but effective musical score by Tony Llorens. This is a film everyone should see, not only because of the need to re-examine this part of our history, but also because it is such a fine example of American cinema. Grady Harp

Not even 100 years ago, the south ... America wise and geography wise .. still had issues with colored people. It's not that nowadays everything is better ... and maybe a case like this would/could still happen ... but I'd like to believe that it is not as likely as it was back then.

Because it was "easy" to just claim a (or multiple) black people did something unlawful ... and everyone just took your word for it. No evidence nothing more needed. Well apart from the testimony ... well rather coerced guilty plea by those who were accused of doing something wrong. It is not a spoiler and it is not really something that should surprise you, that the crime they are accused of here, is something they did not commit.

Still it is about how the systems worked back then and what hoops one has to go through to get a somewhat fair trial ... not an easy watch, but very well acted by all involved ... with the addition of a young Anthony Mackie.

I had the great pleasure of seeing the East Coast Premiere of "Heavens Fall" at the Stony Brook Film Festival, Long Island, NY on July 20, 2006.

Timothy Hutton gave a riveting performance as defense attorney Samuel Leibowitz. In my opinion it was his best since his equally fine portrayal of Archie Goodwin in "Nero Wolfe." Bill Sage as prosecuting attorney Thomas Knight, Jr. and David Strathairn as Judge Horton were also excellent in their roles. Bill Smitrovich as co-defense attorney, Maury Chaykin in a cameo role as a bigoted insurance salesman, Francie Swift as Leibowitz' wife, Belle, and James Tolkan as Thomas Knight, Sr. (four other "Nero Wolfe" actors) were exceptional, too, as was B.J. Britt, Haywood Patterson, in his film debut. LeeLee Sobieski and Azura Skye as Victoria Price and Ruby Bates were marvelous in their extremely difficult roles.

The score by Tony Llorens was haunting - a perfect accompaniment for the plot and the beautiful cinematography by Paul Sanchez.

This fine movie with its superb acting, splendid score, and beautiful cinematography had only been seen in the US by festival audiences, but it is now available to a broader audience. (US DVD release, November 6, 2007) The DVD includes two "behind the scenes" documentaries by Charley Rivkin with additional footage by Adam Witt. The first, "Creating The Fall," includes interviews with Terry Green, Timothy Hutton, Bill Sage, David Strathairn, Anthony Mackie, LeeLee Sobieski, and Azura Skye with their thoughts on the movie and the subject matter. The second, "Surviving The Fall," is about the difficulties the cast and crew endured and heroics they performed when Hurricane Ivan interrupted the filming of "Heavens Fall."