Our American democracy is the most fragile of political systems, to be tweaked and twisted into serving injustice and blatant hysteria for revenge. Sound familiar? But this news is not ripped out of the post-9/11 headlines.
A new movie directed by Robert Redford, The Conspirator, is set in the aftermath of President Abraham Lincoln's assassination. Swift 'justice' is meted out to the conspirators, and the innocent (perhaps) widow, Mary Surratt (an understated, nuanced performance by Robin Wright) whose Washington D.C. boarding house served as a meeting place for those who would kill him. James McAvoy plays her lawyer, Frederick Aiken, who works to get justice in the military tribunal where she is tried.
At the movie's New York premiere this week, partiers packed the Royalton Hotel, asking one another, do you know this story?
Robert Redford, his hair famously tousled looked boyish as he chatted with guests: at the MoMA screening, Mario Cuomo, Dick Cavett and his new bride Martha Rogers, Julian Schnabel and Rula Jebreal, the writer of Miral; the cast of The Book of Mormon were off stage for the night. And later at the Royalton: That Championiship Season's Brian Cox, Bob Balaban, Paul Schrader, Stella Schnabel, Oren Moverman mingled with the cast: Tom Wilkinson, Kevin Kline, Norman Reedus; Gossipgirl's Alexis Bledel, wore jewels by Piaget and Evan Rachel Wood, so glamorous in Mildred Pierce, is plain and pretty as Mary Surratt's daughter, Anna.
Stephen Root plays a boozy, crass witness, pivotal to the prosecution, and set up to lie so that a guilty verdict would be reached. When I asked him how Redford directed him, he said, the famed actor/ director just allowed the cast to provide the “color.” James McAvoy agreed, he lets actors loose and just steps if you are off on the wrong path.
After this historic event, the real Frederick Aiken quit the law and became the first editor at The Washington Post. But hey, this is New York; The Wall Street Journal hosted the party.
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