12 – Directed by Nikita Mikhailkov. Courtroom Drama. A bored Russian jury is sequestered to find a culprit guilty who is obviously guilty. Color
* * * * *
Reginald Rose wrote the 1957 TV and screenplay, and the renowned director Nikita Mikhailkov has rewritten it cogently for modern Russia; he also acts the foreman’s part. It is brilliantly performed in the great Russian comic manner of each actor assuming a defining quirk. In that style, you don’t get better acting than this; although it appears to have nothing to do with Method acting, it is, in fact, Stanislavsky system incarnate; you can find it or have already seen it in Michael Chekhov’s performance in Hitchcock’s Spellbound. Instead of a jury room, the story is spread out in an old polluted school gymnasium, and there we have the difficulty which the film poses of confining its points to local Russian matters, just as the acting also does. The war in Chechnya is laced in, as is a series of backstories which sound like they were improvised by the actors themselves, for they do not always serve the purpose they are intended for, which is as emotionally logical turning points in the verdict of each jury member. So it is hard to translate the Russianness of it into universal terms. However the film remains just as exciting as the original, because excitement is built into it. We know the young man will get off, because that is the only direction for the story to go when it opens. And the various directions the story now takes as it reaches that conclusion are thrilling and daring and dangerous. The question isn’t the conclusion; the question is the tension generated in achieving it. The film was nominated for an Oscar, and did not win. One of the greatest films ever made, Burnt By The Sun, also by this director, did win the best foreign film Oscar, however, and that film is the best place to begin to explore this director’s rich and varied work. But this one will not disappoint your pleasure either. It possesses what American films now seem to lack, great imagination in the creating of dialogue to create characters, great imagination in the actor’s execution of roles, and great breadth of imagination in the direction of actors in the telling of a story.
[ad#300×250]