The Lincoln Conspiracy
The Conspirator is a US-American history - Drama from 2010 by Robert Redford about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln . Based on a true story, the film shows the defense of civilian Mary Surratt by war hero Frederick Aiken before a military court. She was charged for being the mother of John Surratt, an accomplice in the murder of Abraham Lincoln , entertaining all the conspirators at her inn for over a year.
After the film opened in the United States on April 15, the 146th anniversary of Lincoln's assassination, the German theatrical release was on September 29, 2011.
action
On April 14, 1865, there is a celebration for the survivors and winners of the Civil War , at which President Abraham Lincoln was originally supposed to appear. Lincoln prefers to visit Ford's Theater with his wife . Very few people know that. Because of this, some men infiltrate the celebration to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward , and only John Wilkes Booth is in the theater to shoot Lincoln. Frederick Aiken and his friends and comrades in the war experienced the shock of Lincoln's death and the formation of the new government. The first profiles were published as early as April 20, 1865, and gradually the conspirators were either caught or killed. Just six days later, Booth was shot in the head while sieging a barn in which he was hiding.
But that's not all: the government forms a military tribunal with the most loyal generals as judges in order to lawfully condemn the conspirators. Aiken is surprised to learn that Senator Reverdy Johnson has chosen him to defend civilian Mary Surratt , mother of conspirator John Surratt, in that court. She is charged with entertaining the conspirators at her pension for over a year. Aiken is uncomfortable defending Mary as she is facing an unfair trial. He also feels guilty towards his friends who died in the war or who returned home disabled.
The first witness, Louis Weichmann, weighs heavily on Mary Surratt with his testimony, although he himself seems implausible. Aiken can elicit more from him through clever questions than Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt and the judges want to hear, so that they rebuke Aiken and dismiss Weichmann from the stand. On the first night he recapitulates the case with his friends at the Century Club , where they can convince him that Surratt is guilty after all. Because of this, Aiken talks to Johnson, who offers to drop the case if he proves Mary Surratt is guilty. So he goes to the Washington Arsenal , Washington, DC , and tries to interrogate Mary. But she confides in him and tells him that it was not originally about the murder of Lincoln, but rather about a kidnapping and that she saw her son for the last time two weeks before the attack.
Aiken increasingly doubts Mary's guilt. But the next witness also burdens them heavily and all attempts by Aiken with the help of officially certified evidence are either ignored by the court or not allowed at all. There is also political pressure: Secretary of War Edwin Stanton wants everyone to be found guilty and convicted, which he clearly shows to Aiken and Johnson. As a result, Johnson advises Aiken to present Mary's son John as the culprit. With the next witness, John Lloyd, who claims to have been brought into complicity by Mary in court, Aiken can take the advice and get the witness to admit that he was recruited by John. Mary does not want to be saved to the detriment of her son, however.
Because another witness, this time Captain Edward Cottingham, who is supposed to testify on behalf of Mary Surratt, takes a perjury in the courtroom and charges Mary, Aiken becomes furious. He furiously attacks both the judges and Holt and loses his membership in the Century Club . Aiken is now building on Mary's daughter Anna, who says that not her mother, but only her brother John was involved in the conspiracy. In order to protect her son, Mary protests Anna's statement, which is neither accepted by Holt nor by the judges. And so it all depends on the attorneys' closing arguments. In the subsequent deliberations of the judges, there was agreement on the death sentences of the assassins Lewis Payne , David Herold and George Atzerodt , but not on the conviction of Mary Surratts. But in consultation with Stanton, she too is sentenced to death by the rope.
There is one more way to save Mary: John would have to surrender. Aiken lets him know through a priest who knows John's whereabouts. But John does not turn himself in. Now Aiken only has one way out: Mary Surratt has to be tried again in a civil court with a jury . After a long search, Aiken finds Judge Wylie to support him. But President Andrew Johnson overrides the judge's order, and Mary Surratt is the first woman to be executed by a US federal agency.
16 months later, John is caught and Aiken visits him in the same cell that his mother was in. Aiken wants to give him his mother's rosary , but John refuses. He says that Aiken deserves him more than he does. As the United States Supreme Court ruled a year after the trial of Mary Surratt that civilians, even in times of war, will no longer be brought to justice John Surratt tried by a civil court. Since his jury consists of both northerners and southerners and cannot therefore agree on a unanimous guilty verdict, he is not convicted. Frederick Aiken then quits his practice as a lawyer and becomes one of the first editors of the Washington Post .
background
Historical accuracy
- In the film, Mary Surratt was held captive at the Washington Arsenal . In reality it was the Old Capitol Prison . She was first transferred to the Washington Arsenal only thirteen days before her execution .
- The encounter between Frederick Aiken and John Surratt is neither documented nor could it have taken place, as Surratt was indicted in Maryland rather than Washington .
Historical personalities
Mary Surratt (1850)
John Surratt
John Wilkes Booth
Lewis Payne (1865)
Reverdy Johnson
Edwin M. Stanton
Joseph Holt
Louis J. Weichmann
David Herold (1865)
George Atzerodt (1865)
Edman Spangler (1865)
David Hunter
William Hamilton
Abraham Lincoln
criticism
The film received mixed reviews. The Rotten Tomatoes website counted 90 positive reviews of 160 professional reviews, which corresponds to a value of 56%. The film was also only received positively by the general public, with 66% of 17,216 users rating the film positively. This in turn is confirmed by the online film archive IMDb , another platform on which normal users can submit their film reviews, because there 5,590 users gave the film a good 7.0 out of 10 possible points. (As of September 28, 2011)
US reviews
In the Chicago Sun-Times , the renowned film critic Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and said that director Robert Redford had created an "unusually educated and thoughtful historical film". He also praised the acting performance of Robin Wright , who plays Mary Surratt with restraint and wonderfully shows how she has already accepted her guilt. However, the film is not only about whether she is guilty or innocent, but that a lawful process must be secured. And that requires "a lot of theory, a lot of philosophy and a lot of dialogue".
The film critic AO Scott said in the national liberal daily The New York Times that the film is still relevant because of its "issues of the rule of law and the aftermath of a national tragedy" in relation to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 . The "fundamental ethical and political problems are shown as clearly as the chapter headings in a civic education textbook". However, he also sharply criticized the fact that the entire film did not even mention the cause of the Civil War , which had been on the back of the slaves in the defense of the standard of living at the time. It would be as if a film about the Nuremberg Trials didn't mention the Jews or a film about terrorism didn't even mention Islam. And that undermines the "integrity of the film".
Even Richard Corliss saw in the weekly Time magazine between the film and the events of the Bush administration significant parallels. Over 30 years after his directorial debut with A Completely Normal Family , Robert Redford presented a visual style that was “both stately and distinct”. And although the actors were well chosen for their characters, especially Kline and Huston, Corliss wondered why McAvoy played his character Aiken "immature and insecure."
Even Anthony Lane likened The Conspirator in the prestigious New York with the current political to the war on terror and Guantanamo . He praised the actors around Kevin Kline and Danny Huston . He also attested to Robin Wright as an excellent acting performance, as she portrayed "Mary Surratt as a dignified martyr ".
German reviews
Although the film “at first glance” looks like “a rarely discussed facet of the Lincoln assassination”, Julian Hanich said on tagesspiegel.de that it was basically “a critical parable”, “that gave us a historical guise to clarify something about the politics of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Co. ”. The film tries to produce “the highest moral clarity”, whereby it loses “subtlety and dialectic”. In addition, the film suffers from “Redford's penchant for the kitschy image”, which is a special “aesthetic flaw”, because most of its characters appear “almost religiously inflated” because of the soft veil of light.
Jörg Schöning also compared Redford's film on Spiegel Online with current events in the war on terror and said the film looked “a bit like school television”. Redford sees the cinema as "completely ironic-free as a moral institution" and tries to show "his American compatriots" once more "how he thinks about Guantanamo ". The film is far from being objective and Redford is concentrating on the conflicts "reason of state versus family ties, authority versus justice, the right to punish against the right to refuse to testify".
According to Bert Rebhandl of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, “numerous resonant formulations in James D. Solomon's screenplay suggest that the“ aesthetically conservative but content-wise captivating film ”is often compared with the current events around September 11th . At a "patient pace, with numerous flashbacks and dialogue and courtroom scenes, whose dramaturgy of a retarding path of knowledge is familiar from so many American films of this type," Redford and Solomon moved the "fate of Mary Surratt (Robin Wright) into focus."
Berthold Seewald called in the world Robert Redford's film a "documentary game in real time" and an "interesting costume piece with striking images." “Like the Attic poets, he takes myth to reflect a daily problem”, although unfortunately he forgot “that the great ancient tragedies live through their nuances and shades of gray”. Since he misses the historical background to slavery and reconstruction, the film remains only "a brute didactic piece without historical understanding."
Although with a “Redford film you never have to worry” “whether you sympathize with the right side”, and you have to be grateful for the “skillful seriousness with which he unfolds his drama around this abstract conflict” , as well as for the possibility of cheering “on the part of justice”, said Barbara Schweizerhof on taz.de that the “commitment would have been more sustainable and effective” if the good guys were “a little dirtier and uglier”. Otherwise it is a "concentrated costume drama that carefully reconstructs its era, including strange beard costumes."
publication
After the film celebrated its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, 2010, it was officially released in theaters on April 15, 2011. On the first weekend, the film only grossed 3.5 million US dollars in 707 theaters. Overall, the film comes in the United States with a total budget of 25 million US dollars and revenues of 11.5 million US dollars. The German theatrical release was on September 29, 2011. Since March 1, 2012 the film has been available on DVD and Blu-ray Disc .
Web links
- The Conspirator in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The Lincoln conspiracy in the German dubbing file
- The Lincoln Conspiracy in the Lexicon of International Films
- Official German website
- Official English website
- The Lincoln Conspiracy - September 11th in 19th Century America. Legal Tribune Online September 15, 2012
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jeffrey S. Williams: Historical Inaccuracies in 'The Conspirator' ( Memento of the original from August 1, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on thisweekinthecivilwar.com of April 23, 2011 (English), accessed August 8, 2011
- ↑ Carrie S .: The Conspirator vs. Facts ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on thecivilwarproject.com on April 17, 2011, accessed on August 8, 2011
- ^ The Conspirator (2010). rottentomatoes.com, accessed September 28, 2011 .
- ↑ Roger Ebert: The Conspirator The Conspirator on rogerebert.com from April 14, 2011 (English), accessed on August 8, 2011
- ^ AO Scott: History's Loose Ends, and a Tightening Noose on nytimes.com from April 14, 2011 (English), accessed on August 8, 2011
- ↑ Richard Corliss: The Conspirator Revisits a Pivotal Chapter of American Law and War on time.com, September 17, 2010, accessed on August 8, 2011
- ^ Anthony Lane Casualties of War on newyorker.com April 18, 2011, accessed August 8, 2011
- ↑ Julian Hanich: HISTORICAL DRAMA “The Lincoln Conspiracy” In case of doubt against the right to tagesspiegel.de from September 28, 2011, accessed on October 10, 2011
- ↑ Jörg Schöning: Robert Redford's civil rights drama on Spiegel Online from September 29, 2011, accessed on October 10, 2011
- ↑ Bert Rebhandl: Robert Redford's new film Insurance against Hate on faz.net from September 29, 2011, accessed on October 10, 2011
- ^ Berthold Seewald: What is Lincoln's murder and 9/11 in common on welt.de of September 27, 2011, accessed on October 10, 2011
- ↑ Barbara Schweizerhof: Robert Redford's "The Lincoln Conspiracy", The good guys look too good on taz.de from September 29, 2011, accessed on October 10, 2011
- ↑ April 15-17, 2011 at boxofficemojo.com (English), accessed August 8, 2011
- ^ The Conspirator at boxofficemojo.com , accessed August 8, 2011
