At the 2012 Republican National Convention, Clint Eastwood delivered a divisive speech articulating his support for the presidential candidate Mitt Romney. As one would expect from a speech by an old libertarian who rose to stardom as a Western hero, it was long and rambling and often confusing to follow, but the largest source of mockery was that it was addressed to an empty chair. The speech he delivered was conceptualized as delivering his verdict on then President Barack Obama’s tenure to a chair with no ears to listen to it. Later clarifying the comments he made during the speech, Eastwood stated, “My only message was [that] I wanted people to take the idolizing factor out of every contestant out there. Just look at the work, look at the background, and then make a judgment on that.” Cut to 2024 and Nicolas Hoult is missing from his juror’s chair as the presiding judge passes a judgement on a man who is styled like J.D. Vance who is accused of the crime that we know Hoult’s character committed. Despite David Zaslav throwing Juror #2 to conglomerated streaming adjective MAX, the film received wide critical acclaim especially from audiences in Europe who viewed it as an examination of contemporary American politics. While the film is continually questioning civic involvement and due process under the law, philosophical quandaries about the effort required for people to change begin to creep into the foreground of this film. Eastwood’s new film certainly has conservative elements, it is decidedly non-reformist towards American institutions, but his brand of libertarianism leaves a space for social critique of the issues that arrive from the baggage people bring to their civic duties. First and foremost: dedication to the nuclear family. While conservative critics and filmmakers decry the dissolution of the nuclear family like it’s the coming of the apocalypse, Juror #2 allows for an examination of its foundation. As American and world politics tend towards hyper-social-conservative fascism in the past year, it is perhaps useful to discuss how this buzzword is being depicted in the popular media and the recent spate of films that grapple with the nuclear family’s relationship to politics, civics, and law and order.
Outlined by an inserted pre-trial video watched by the jurors near the beginning of the film, Juror #2’s support of American ideals is certainly apparent in the film; it spends most of its runtime deconstructing the “impartial” in the impartial jury of one’s peers and not the “jury of one’s peers” aspect. The characters that form the jury represent a diversity of opinions but threaten an impartial due process with personal grudges and history. Cedric Yarbrough as Marcus recognizes the defendant’s neck tattoo as a sign of gang membership and his experience in community work makes him stand firm for condemning the man, an unwavering judge on past character as the indictment of the present man. J.K. Simmons as Harold brings in his former Chicago detective position and introduces evidence from outside the court to reach his own conclusion, an effort that leads to his dismissal from the jury. Even Chikako Fukuyama as Keiko brings her medical school knowledge to provide a secondary interpretation of medical evidence. And of course, Nicolas Hoult as Justin Kemp, who aside from knowing that he was responsible for the battery the other is accused of committing, is on the brink of becoming a new parent. As a man who needs to see himself as the hero protecting his new family and a former alcoholic who believes in a person’s ability to alter personal traits, Kemp’s upstanding-citizen self-delusion is threatened by his initial act of deception in not recusing himself from the jury, an act performed in self-preservation. In the end, he gives up on the twelfth tenet of Alcoholics Anonymous, to help others in need, by caving to popular opinion in the jury pool and indicting the innocent defendant. The inciting incident behind this self-betrayal comes not from inside the courtroom or personal self-reflection, but from an outside factor that had been looming over the entire film: the birth of his child. Forcing himself into a traditional family role as the father by betraying his belief in redemption underscores a brutally cynical view of the modern American family. One where political and moral concessions must be made to uphold the idyllic veneer of the happy nuclear family.
While Juror #2 is a film about criminal trials, the issues of bringing competing personal interests to otherwise impartial judgements on character extends to other American institutions, most notably elections. A four year window is given as the frame for people changing; the outcome of the jury will determine the reelection of a District Attorney; the film is set in Georgia and the protagonist shares a name with its governor; the process of a jury selecting a verdict is similar to that of a presidential election happening on the national (or more accurately, state) scale. Juror #2 is a film swirling with these social examinations while dealing with the heady personal implications of morality and change in what is otherwise a pretty dumb courtroom thriller that could easily be seen as a failed twist movie.
This foundation of violence under the nuclear family and the impetus for personal change is also foregrounded in a different American film from 2024: Richard Linklater’s Hit Man. A romantic comedy that is also hagiography of a man who participated in what is likely police entrapment, Hit Man follows many of the same thematic beats as Juror #2: what it takes for a person to change, judgement in the eyes of the law, and a happy family based on taking another person’s life. Linklater’s other 2024 film Hometown Prison belies some of the Texas liberal politics behind the filmmaker. That film meanders through his childhood town observing a neighborhood impacted by state sanctioned death in the titular hometown prison, eventually concluding that the death penalty should be abolished. It is interesting to note then the relative lack of criticism that the police force is given in Hit Man. While lip service is played on the idea of entrapment, it is never fully explored, instead letting the base urges of law enforcement prejudge a suspected criminal. Setting up a situation for a suspect to take the bait means they are tried and judged by this police unit before they’re given a chance to recant. The film doesn’t let the suspects get a second chance and this seems at odds with its central themes of personal change. Unlike Juror #2, Hit Man’s personal change comes not from within, but from formation of oneself into the role that they play in life, on stage, or for others. Gary’s life begins to merge with that of his performance of Ron, both played by Glen Powell, all the while entering a romantic relationship with Maddy, played by Adria Arjona. They are given a happy ending, starting their own family with two kids and a nice house in the New Orleans suburbs, but it’s built on a levee of lies. When asked about how their parents met, Gary and Maddy omit the whole hitman situation from their story to their children. They also handily ignore the fact that both committed premeditated murder. This foundation of the happy nuclear family is built upon an act of destruction, a shooting and suffocation of two other people. While Hit Man goes further than Juror #2 in literalizing the violence under its surface, its romantic ending feels less nuanced and incisive than I would like.
In a post pandemic world, the home may begin to take on new symbolism in culture, but it has long been a representation of a traditional family unit. In two 2024 films, the four walls act as a confining force for a central family. While the social and political context could not be more different for Here and The Seed of the Sacred Fig, violence and trauma begin to seep into the walls of the family home to the point where both seem more porous to the outside world than their traditional symbol of security might afford. While both films feel limited by their confinement, this trapped feeling is exactly what both films are attempting to evoke, as bonds within the nuclear family begin to fray. Here is a reteam of the Forrest Gump collaborators Robert Zemeckis, Eric Roth, Tom Hanks, and Robin Wright. In Gump, the screenplay neuters any interesting political attacks that the book it’s adapted from takes, replacing it with sickly saccharine sentimentality. Here, on the other hand, retains some of the original comic’s time-collapsing social observations. Unfortunately, it does so in the most unsubtle and annoying way possible. With no faith in the audience, Here refuses to explore negative space, forcing all action to remain in a single room of the house as a function of a fixed perspective camera. Match cuts in time rather than space reveal little more than the fact that two similar things happened, and an alienating digital sheen contrasts with an overacting style for a viewing experience I can only describe as “being yelled at”. Rampant AI usage, de-aging, and poor background compositing makes the film look awful, especially on a large screen. And yet I can’t completely write this film off. Zemeckis’ technology fetishism aside, the film does manage to tap into a despair and loneliness of a 20th century America. People attempt to escape the four walls surrounding them, and often do, but the central story is one where a future is predetermined. The American Dream of building your own house in the wilderness, seen in an early colonial landmark perpetually looming over the living room window, never gets fulfilled in the Hanks storyline and the prison cell of the film frame becomes something that seems impossible to escape from. The walls of the room themselves phase in and out of existence, even disappearing completely, letting them become permeable to the air of mid-century American economic fears and random acts of violence. Death continues to haunt the space on screen and provides fraying of a central dynamic in the nuclear family formed at the center, although it often arrives as an “Act of God” more so than an extension of the evils of American society. Multiple wars are fought, and colonialism tears away the land of the Lenni-Lenape in the background of the main action, but the violence associated with these is relegated mostly to accidental deaths and people falling ill. A greater hand from above seems to be the capricious mastermind behind the random deaths that befall the inhabitants of this living room, rather than a rottenness at the heart of the whole affair. This is perhaps the most conservative film in this roundup, but Here still probes at the suburban house and finds that death can still enter through the walls of this supposed fortress.
By contrast The Seed of the Sacred Fig was shot illegally in Iran, breaking many censorship laws, and thus for production reasons was mostly confined to drably lit beige interiors. Its production led to the director Mohammad Rasoulof being exiled from Iran, a narrative that has been on the forefront of garnering this film awards. The film follows the political divisions within a family living in the capital of Tehran. The parents are both protective of the state while their two daughters support a resistance movement leading to heated family arguments. The father, an investigating judge whose job is to condemn people in a kangaroo court, appears to be under moral duress over his employment until he becomes the outright villain in the second half, commandeering the family and terrorizing them. In this film, the four walls of the apartment do as much to keep people and eyeballs out as it is to trap suspects inside. The familial bonds of the nuclear family are tested as violence breaks its way in; initially via a school friend shot by riot control devices seeking refuge inside, and eventually, via a missing gun causing the father to psychologically and then physically harm his family. The outside world and its issues of rebellion and suppression are beamed directly into the house, impossible to cover up the cracks forming between daughter and father. The film at this point exits the city and starts to subvert a classic Iranian subgenre of the family road trip film, filling it with paranoid threats to passersby and a car chase rather than more internal contemplation. The trip ends with a foot chase through old ruins. By this point, the nuclear family has transformed into a synecdoche of society. Running through ancient, angled architecture, the violence that society had inflicted upon the family earlier becomes self-inflicted as the result of this archetypal shift. Unfortunately, the film is quite messy. It drops plotlines; it has inconsistent, shallow characters meant to represent a stereotype of an idea rather than a person; and it essentially remakes the first half as a genre movie during the last act. Perhaps this film’s biggest accomplishment is a function of its guerilla nature. By flouting censorship laws, The Seed of the Sacred Fig can depict things on screen that are unseen in many other Iranian films. Household interiors gain some verisimilitude as women no longer are required to always wear Hijabs on screen. These head coverings become a heavy-handed symbol of political support for revolution as the film continues, but it allows the film to be confined to interiors in a way that Iranian cinema often is not. It traps the family within rooms and apartments as a function of paranoia, a contrast to the failure of the American Dream in Here.
Like The Seed of the Sacred Fig except through the lens of a populist blockbuster, Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here was also highly feted at the Academy Awards garnering a Best International Feature nomination and a surprise Best Picture nod as well. It should be no surprise at this film’s success, after all it is from the same production group that garnered massive international and Brazilian box office success with social issues melodramas like Central Station and City of God. I’m Still Here tackles a separate issue from the economic devastation in those previous films, that of the history of Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1960’s and the human rights violations it incurred. Coming off the heels of left-leaning politician Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s squeaker of a win of over far-right Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil’s 2023 presidential election, the film’s historical perspective seems to mirror that of the United States’ Oppenheimer. A film that is willing to interrogate and condemn government sanctioned human rights violations while distancing itself from thorny questions about the central characters’ allegiance to socialism and armed revolution, I’m Still Here represents an appetite for understanding and recontextualizing a traumatic time in the past. The film walks this tightrope by focusing on an upper middle-class family who is distanced from armed revolutionaries fighting the dictatorship. The loss of the central patriarch is what galvanizes the family to political action, the broader world seems to be shielded from the main characters and does little to drive their involvement, even if it’s always present on the edges of the frame. The film depicts a government attack on the nuclear family, in this case a literal invasion of the home that results in the abduction of the father, mother, and eldest daughter, forcibly splitting this family apart. Its melodrama is effective. The illogical, capricious questioning and detainment evokes outrage; the breaking of familial bonds and death of main characters brings in sadness. A Marvel Cinematic Universe level cameo from Brazilian movie star Fernanda Montenegro creates a haunted feeling of remembrance soon to be forgotten. The family at the center is held together within photographs; with the father missing, they nostalgically reconstruct the complete family through the fuzzy lens of film grain. The best moment in the film is a match cut between an army unit in identical white shirts cutting to a school choir of identically uniformed girls; political indoctrination can happen anywhere and the army of the future who might support far-right policies might have had the groundwork laid out under this old regime.
Other movies this year also explored themes of rule-of-law and violence on family, but the films discussed here provide a wide-ranging look at how these themes are discussed in the contemporary lens from conservative to reformist. These films attempt to deconstruct the family as a fortress. Whether the central characters become a reflection of society or merely a subject of it, each has a different critique of its home society. As we buckle in for four years of attacks on queer people and minorities for not meeting “traditional family values”, it’s useful to investigate how the media we consume interrogates or upholds those ideals. How do laws meant to promote law and order affect the people and families it is trying to protect, let alone those who do not fit a mold prescribed by societal norms? While ranging in political belief and quality the films discussed here provide some sort of an answer.