Twelve Angry Men
How come this is so well regarded? It’s nothing more than white dudes talking.
The film quality is nothing special, there’s no cinematography, mostly stationary cameras. It’s basically a filmed theatre play.
It was done in black and white in a time where colour was commonplace.
What about the script?
The script is tight, drip feeding the reveals to keep the tension on. They come out of the court room totally convinced, but as the evidence is scrutinised more thoroughly, it falls apart with relative ease. Turns out “beyond a reasonable doubt” is a high bar to pass.
Are the jurors believable?
I would say so, it sounds like a well rounded slice of society (at least the white male part).
- There are people who don’t care (#7).
- There are people too afraid to think about these things and defer to external authorities (#11).
- There are those that are similarly oppressed and can only raise up with a favourable environment (#5, #10).
- There are those that recognise the nuances are too much for them, but can be reasoned with after an argument (#2, #6).
- There are those that take the process seriously, even when reaching opposite conclusions (#8, #4, #9).
- There is the control freak who doesn’t want to appear biased, since he is the spokesman (#1).
- Finally, there are some that can’t shake personal (#3) or societal (#10) prejudices when analysing the case.
What to say about the actors?
Nothing bad can be said. Henry Fonda is the only familiar face for me, but they all stand together, each in their role.
It’s good. It’s good… 😢😢😢
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.