The news fell like an atomic bomb in the hearts of followers and fans: Warner, the company whose logo prefaced many of the films directed by Clint Eastwood throughout a career spanning more than five decades, would be launched in the United States in just fifty movie theaters before landing directly on the Max platform. Some European countries enjoyed a sensible launch but in the rest of the world, and in Argentina in particular, nothing at all. Not even a big screen available for the fortieth feature film by a filmmaker with capital letters who turned 94 last May. Your last movie? It is difficult to say, since his late work has been saying goodbye, apparently, for quite some time, to a happily extensive and fruitful twilight. The last great classical auteur of Hollywood cinema – although classicism in his filmography is a term always in tension – delivers with Jury No. 2 another reflection on intricate ethical and moral issues, confronting institutions with some of their members, illuminating along the way the construction of the collective under the particular prism of the personal.
Available in our country for a couple of days on the Max platform, Eastwood's latest is a complex film, with multiple edges, although eclipsed behind the façade of a direct and transparent story. A trial movie that is unlike almost any other trial movie, beyond its superficial qualities. An exceptional and even eccentric story that starts from an unusual situation to deconstruct and reconstruct the figure of the silent hero. The anonymous hero: the one who, far from boasting about it, is precisely because of his introversion and/or lack of awareness of being one, a direct consequence of a dilemma that is difficult to resolve. With the central performances of Nicholas Hoult, in one of the best roles of his career to date, and another tight performance by Toni Collette – twenty-two years after their work together in a great boy as son and mother, respectively, Jury No. 2 It is another example of a type of cinematographic story that no longer seems to have a place in the Hollywood industry, and that for this reason has fallen under the blows of the new rules of the game of the audiovisual universe.
“Cinema is not an intellectual sport for me, but an emotional craft,” Clint Eastwood recently declared in one of the very few interviews offered to the press. In the extensive conversation with the shiny printed magazine The Metrographthe actor and director also explained that “sometimes you like a script and you would like to do it as an actor; Other times the script is attractive to you because you would like to direct it. You feel things about certain projects and you would like to put your imprint on them, because if it fell into other hands they might begin to see things in a different way. It's not fun when someone directs a movie without actually seeing the material. When you worked with filmmakers like Sergio Leone or Don Siegel everything was fun, and things turned out the way you wanted them to. If you do it yourself and it goes wrong, you have to take the hits; If it goes well, you receive the glory.” The director must have felt something like that. The unforgivable, Million Dollar Baby y Gran Torino upon reading the original script by Jonathan A. Abrams that would end up becoming Jury No. 2a feature film as personal as any in his filmography. The good, the bad and the ugly. Those that didn't turn out so well and, of course, the masterpieces.
CRIMES AND SINS
The first narrator, although it would be more correct to place him as the driving force of the main point of view, is Justin Kemp (Hoult), a young journalist and future father who seems to have left his alcohol addiction behind and is optimistically observing the beginning of the rest of his days. . It will not be the only look that spans the almost two hours of the story, but it will be the most relevant, at least until the closing. The film opens with him, attentive to the possibility of being chosen as a jury in a homicide case that occurred in the city in the state of Georgia where he lives, works and, very soon, will be responsible for a new life. The wife's advanced state of pregnancy has him somewhat nervous and the possibility of the birth coming early does not seem to go well with his obligations as a citizen. Jury No. 2 It moves towards the selection of the twelve members of the jury, where Justin is chosen, like so many others, precisely because they would prefer not to be in that place, as the judge claims, thus guaranteeing a certain degree of impartiality. Impartiality that, in more than one case, does not seem to be confirmed with certainty: prejudices, some of them logical, run rampant and everything seems to indicate that the accused, a man with a violent and criminal past, was the one who hit and threw into the void his girlfriend after a heated argument that took place in front of a dozen or more witnesses. The man reaffirms his innocence against all odds but everything seems to be against him, even though the evidence is, as is often stated in the jargon, circumstantial.
At that moment the script introduces several elements that will serve as narrative pivots. On the one hand, the final composition of the jury, which from then on will behave in a similar way to that of the classic Twelve men in conflictwith its majority convictions called into question by at least one renegade. On the other hand, the dramatic relevance of the figure of the prosecutor, played by Collette, a lawyer who is beginning her political career and whose participation in that particular case – and the ultimate goal of a guilty verdict – could help her get the seat. . Finally, an element that cannot be interpreted as a spoiler, since it occurs during the first minutes of the screening and becomes the center of gravity for everything to come: after learning the details of the trial, Justin recognizes the accused and also the circumstances. prior to the death of the victim, since that night, completely by chance, he walked around the bar where the events took place.
Furthermore, during the return home during that fateful rainy night – a memory arranged on screen in the classic way, through an explanatory flashback – the young jury remembers having had an accident. A blow on the hood of his vehicle. Surely a deer, although in light of the new circumstances it could have been something very different. The pillars of the plot are thus arranged to build a portrait of guilt and innocence, guilt and remorse and, above all, the ethical decisions that are made based on them. Justin Kemp is the juror who knows more than the other jurors, or at least suspects it. The only one, in principle, who is willing to discuss the guilt of the accused since he knows first-hand the certainty of the doubt. That reasonable doubt that, according to the legal institution and the concept of justice with popular juries, must guide decisions when reaching a fair sentence.
A STORY ABOUT PEOPLE
“I felt it was vital to let the audience know up front how things are,” said screenwriter Jonathan Abrams in an interview published by IndieWirehighlighting the fact that the history of Jury No. 2 It is not a typical criminal and judicial mystery that is resolved during the last minutes, but the focus is on the “exploration of the ethical and moral complications of the crime. Clint wanted it to go deeper into the human elements, removing anything that felt too intense or superficial. The first thing he said to me was 'This is a story about people, people. That's what I like and that's why I chose to make the film. It is very difficult because the jurors are twelve characters and you have to give each of them a personality and, ideally, that personality has to contribute something to the story, in one way or another.” And although not all juries have a preponderant dramatic development, at least they do represent a compelling human or ideological vision, without falling into the category of stereotype. There are two members of the group, in addition to the essential Justin, who act as narrative pawns in two dissimilar moments of the plot. In the first instance, the former detective played by JK Simmons, who at a certain point begins to doubt the guilt of the accused and takes the bull by the horns, investigating on his own against the legal rules that prevent him from doing so. On the other, the jury played by Cedric Yarbrough, who seems so convinced of the prisoner's guilt that no evidence or argument could change his mind. Two secondary masses around which Justin begins to orbit in the few moments in which he manages to leave his own center of gravitation: the explosive core made up of his sense of responsibility, guilt and fear of punishment.
Abrams began thinking about the central idea of the film ten years ago, as an homage to Twelve men in conflictSidney Lumet's 1957 feature film considered one of the great exponents of the trial genre. “The central idea of Jury No. 2 It is being able to look at a system that may not work the way you would like, but at the same time it is the best system we have. I hope that that idea is what people can take from the film and take with them.” As the story progresses, the focus stops being on the jury's closed-door discussions and focuses increasingly on the protagonist's stressed and self-conscious personality. Likewise, when the moment of final deliberation and conviction arrives, the use of ellipsis demonstrates once again the intentions expressed by Abrams and embraced by Eastwood: what is important is not the suspense, the mystery, whether or not the accused will be convicted. . What matters is what Justin thinks and does and, once the trance is over, what other people do with the new information that falls into their lap and its direct corollary, suspicions. It is there when the concept of heroism reappears, although under the least expected habits. Yeah Jury No. 2 is finally Clint Eastwood's swan song (I wish there were more films, and in movie theaters), the farewell comes with an intelligent and engaging film, again – and as in several of his latest creations – starring men and “ordinary” women in far from everyday circumstances. Long live Clint!
