A Busca pela Justiça

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.

There is much about this film that makes it a good film, the cast are all very good and seem perfect in their respective roles. There are many different emotions and ways of thinking being portrayed and this is all done really well. In many ways this film reminds me of 'A time to kill', but it is shocking to think that the events portrayed really happened, and not that far into the past either. The racism and segregation that existed in the southern states of the USA are in many ways worse than apartheid in South Africa. To think that otherwise intelligent, moral and well mannered people can have such idiotic views regarding people of a different colour is astounding and America should be deeply ashamed of this. I wonder what some of the real people as portrayed in this film now think of their Black President? I would recommend this film to anyone who enjoyed 'A time to kill' or 'To kill a mocking bird'.

I liked the movie a lot, and when I saw that it was inspired by a true story, well that got me thinking: 1 Is that possible that someone even one person could do such a thing without any remorse's? 2 If it's possible than can't we really do anything to stop and prevent such an awful act from happening? 3 And last but not least, are there still places not only in U.S. but on earth were such a thing is still possible? I understand that it's in their culture to HATE the black community, it's their educations foul, from father to son and so on and so fourth,but really,come on wake up... This of course applies to the past but I'm afraid that it's appliable in our present to.

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."

As a featured extra on the film, jury foreman, I very much enjoyed working on the film. Everyone was very very good to work with. I have done theater but this was my first film in front of the camera. EVERYONE was really great!!! Not only on camera but behind the scenes they were all wonderful people. The actors and crew were all very nice, helpful and understanding of the mistakes we made as non professionals. I have worked with other directors and Terry is one of the best.

We here in Monroeville would love to give them a very special thanks for all the things they did to help save the courthouse and the other work they did before and after hurricane Ivan.