Word: berrigan
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...produced a film which seems to have changed his image in some men's eyes. The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, adapted by Daniel Berrigan from his own play, and filmed by Gordon Davidson--who staged the original production as artistic director of the Mark Taper Forum--is definitely radical in outlook. The figures it focuses on and attempts to heroicize not only damn the Vietnam War, but a general policy of American Third World influence which they view as evidence of economic imperialism...
Many of the film's limitations derive from the original material. Documentary theater--such as Berrigan's play--sacrifices characterization and theatrical expressiveness in order to get the simple facts straight and pure. This can be deadly dull. And, though I've not seen the play, only read it, I assume that the nearness of the Catonsville Nine's trial, and some clever ploys at arousing consequent emotional tension (including film clips of the actual Catonsville action), are what insured its almost universal acceptance one year...
Father Daniel Berrigan, S.J. (played by Ed Flanders) addresses the court, reading from a poem of his own composition: "We have chosen to say, with the gift of our freedom, that the violence stops here, the death stops here, the suppression of truth stops here, this war stops here...
...eight other defendants look at each other and smile, smiles that convey much of what is wrong with this film of The Trial of the Catonsville Nine. They are smug smiles, full of condescension and unchecked theatrical egotism. The movie is extracted virtually as a piece from Father Berrigan's play, which was in turn a dramatization of his 1968 trial for burning draft records. There Berrigan, his brother Philip and seven other defendants tried to reverse the guilt and put the whole Viet Nam War on trial. But the characters in the film seem to be acting less...
...immaculately aloof. This is partly the fault of Director Gordon Davidson, who has used his original company from the theater without having them scale down their acting for the screen. Peter Strauss's reserved and affecting Thomas Lewis is an exception, as is Flanders' creditable Daniel Berrigan. Almost everyone else-most irritatingly Douglass Watson as Philip Berrigan-plays for the rafters. Haskell Wexler's superb photography, however, effectively challenges the visual restrictions of a transposed stage play...