The Conspirator
tells the story of Mary Surratt (Robin Wright). She owned the boarding house where the Lincoln Assassination
conspirators met. She didn’t do
anything wrong. She hanged for it.
That’s the hook, at least. It really tells the story of Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy),
an idealistic young attorney and Union war hero who takes her case. Aiken’s a believer, you see, in the
Constitution and due process. He
believes in the jury of one’s peers and the rule of law. He can’t imagine America as a wounded,
bloodthirsty nation, one out for revenge even at the cost of its soul.
That’s the text, at least. The subtext is an exploration of hubris and vengeance and
the injustices they wreak.
That’s the subtext, at least. The context is an America ten years on from 9/11, an America
that has recoiled from its own lashings out and now seems more interested in
taking its own measure than sharpening new swords.
And of course it’s very well done. Robert Redford knows how to direct a film and he can attract
the best talent around. But that
subtext, at least in today’s context, feels a bit too on the nose. We can tut at cynical old men, now long
dead, and compare them to cynical old men who still haunt the studios of Fox
News. But this film can’t teach us
anything about them because it focuses too closely on its text. It assumes the rest and assumes that
we’ll assume it, and it leaves those of us who refuse the easy answer on the
outside.
So there I sat, admiring the film’s recreation of post Civil
War Washington, admiring its performances, and enjoying the courtroom drama of
a case whose outcome I already knew.
But I couldn’t shake the film’s simplicity of viewpoint and its almost
too casual judgementalism. The Conspirator will engage your
imagination and it may break your heart, but it should light off at least one
alarm bell in your brain. It
certainly did in mine.
