Lauren Sklaroff

I am a history professor. I teach this material all the time and was hoping that I could show this movie to my students. I love Sorkin and most of the actors in the film. It was such a disappointment! The film is intended for those who are VERY familiar with the events and do not need any refreshing on the politics of the 1960s. Nixon was mentioned maybe once. The film is entirely in the courtroom and you never get a sense of why this matters--the stakes are SO obscure. The film offers no analysis of the major differences between YIP, SDS, and the Panthers, other than just the caricature of Hayden vs. Hoffman. You cannot imagine how this even came to be--why were they at the convention? Why are they ALL on trial? Again, a survey level student or just a curious viewer would have no idea. Three Days in Woodstock is a MUCH better film about the counterculture and the 1960s, as are documentaries like Berkeley in the Sixties. There is too much Sorkin insider script nonsense for a regular person to take anything away from this film.

The casting of Cate Blanchett clearly led this to become a top notch project (and CB is ex producer). The story of the STOP ERA is way more compelling due to Blanchett's amazing portrayal of Schlafly and Sara Paulson, who is terrific in everything. It is, to me (and I'm a professional historian of this era in US History), a very uneven look at the other side. I adore Martindale, Ullman, Byrne, but none of them are given real, serious treatment and the nuance seems to be in the fact that they don't all get along. But anyone familiar with feminism will know that there were many factions and that not every woman was in lockstep. The most genuine portrayal of diverse thinking is predictably in the Chisolm episode, which sadly seems most resonant today. I'd assign it for my students as an entrway, but not the final word. While Schlafly comes off as flawed, this is in no way a sympathetic portrayal of the women's libbers and may contribute to the catfight nature of feminism that was always a hallmark of 1970s media.