We saw The Conspirator a couple of nights ago on Pay Per View. The story looked promising – the telling of the story of Mary Surratt. She was the first woman executed by the US government. Her crime – being part of the conspiracy to kill Abraham Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William Seward. The story was a courtroom drama, much like another such movie that is one of my favorites, Breaker Morant. But where Breaker Morant has passionate and firey performances from Edward Woodward, Bryan Brown and Jack Thompson, one gets the feeling the life has been sucked out of The Conspirator, at least in the courtroom anyway. Despite this being a courtroom drama, it’s what happens outside the courtroom that things get interesting.
For students of history, and especially those who want to know more about the Lincoln assassination up until Mary Surratt’s trial, this movie gets it right. If you didn’t already know the facts surrounding the conspiracy to decapitate the US government, this movie gives you a fairly good primer. There was indeed a conspiracy to kill Lincoln and the others, and the place these conspirators often met was Mary Surratt’s boardinghouse in Washington.
Most of the characters in this movie are not very sympathetic or very likeable. Senator Reverdy Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) at first starts out as a noble character, insisting on defending Mary Surratt in the face of public outrage at the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. He talked a great game about Constitutional rights, but he didn’t “walk the walk.” When the going got tough, he pawned the case off to a novice attorney in his employ, Capt. Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy). His excuse was that Mary Surratt might get a more fair trial if she was represented by a Yankee. For awhile that excuse held water, but when Aiken needed Johnson’s help Johnson conveniently needed to attend to some business in Baltimore. Aiken himself felt his client was guilty when he took the case – at least he was honest. Aiken redeemed himself later when he saw the trial in which he was participating was a sham. He started his own investigation and realized it wasn’t Mary Surratt the feds were after, but her son John Jr., who had fled the country to Montreal before the assassination. The trial was a kangaroo court, rules were made up as they went along, evidence was tampered with, and witnesses for both the prosecution and the defense lied to save their own skins. Aiken evolved from being a skeptic about Mary Surratt’s innocence to Surratt’s fiercest defender. He showed his own resolve when people started to shun him for being Surratt’s lawyer. The social club he belonged to expelled him for “conduct unbecoming a member.” His girlfriend Sarah dumped him [bitch!] because of his devotion to principle, for trying to ensure Mary Surratt got a fair trial. Even his closest friends began to doubt him, but at least they stuck with him.
Secretary of War Edwin Stanton [Kevin Kline] is consistent – he’s loathsome throughout the movie. He wants Mary Surratt to be executed – period. He even told Aiken if either Mary Surratt or her son, John Jr. was executed, that would be fine with him – he wasn’t particular. When a majority of the tribunal found Mary Surratt guilty but opted to spare her the death penalty, Stanton wouldn’t take “no” for an answer and got the tribunal to reconsider. When Aiken filed a Writ of Habeus Corpus to get a civilian trial for Mary Surratt, Stanton got Andrew Johnson to suspend the writ. Kline’s Stanton cared not for the law, but vengeance. Kline played Stanton very well.
Mary Surratt [Robin Wright] doesn’t generate a whole lot of sympathy. She betrayed her Confederate sympathies when she referred to Abraham Lincoln as “your president” when talking with Aiken. She isn’t very helpful to Aiken because her only thought was to protect her son. Perhaps she knew that since her son was not in custody to be tried, that she was as good as dead and didn’t put up a fight to save herself. She didn’t really deny that she knew nothing of the conspiracy to kill Lincoln. She did admit she knew of a plot to kidnap [but not kill] Lincoln. While she doesn’t generate any sympathy, Wright’s Surratt generates respect. She is no clichéd “helpless female” – she’s a widow who’s had a hard life and has a steely resolve to get her through that hard life. There are three times when you see any emotion from Mary Surratt – when her daughter testifies on her behalf, when Aiken tried to make the trial about her son, and right before she was led to the gallows. But when she got to the gallows, she was recomposed. You get to see the last thing Mary Surratt sees as the execution hood is placed over her head. She went to her death clutching a rosary bead. She exhibited more resolve and composure than the males who were being executed with her.
There is one poignant moment at the very end of the movie. John Surratt Jr. had surrendered himself to the authorities after his mother’s execution. Aiken [who by this time no longer practiced law] visited the younger Surratt in his prison cell to deliver to him the rosary his mother held onto when she died. John Jr. looked at the rosary, but handed it back to Aiken. He said “this is yours – you were more of a son to my mother than I was.”
At the end of the movie there’s a blurb about how the Supreme Court upheld the right for citizens to be tried by a jury of their peers, even in wartime. The implication is clear – trying civilians with military tribunals is wrong. Another blurb told of the government’s inability to convict John Surratt Jr. of anything relating to the Lincoln assassination, thus implying that Mary Surratt was wrongly convicted. Was she guilty or not? The movie lets you draw your own conclusions. Many historians think she was guilty as charged. Some historians aren’t so sure.
Here’s what this movie was really about – this was a thought piece about how a country struggles uphold its ideals for the rule of law in times of crisis. One cannot help but juxtapose the post-Civil War period with the post-9/11 world we live in today. If that was Robert Redford’s intent, he succeeded. As I set out to write this little blurb, I so wanted to bash Robert Redford over the head because I initially thought his movie about Mary Surratt’s “trial” [and I use that term loosely] was a propaganda piece for the Left. Mary Surratt’s conspirators were led into the courtroom with hoods over their heads [Abu Grahib anyone?]. Mary Surratt herself wasn’t let out of her cell until Aiken intervened. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought this could happen at any time, not just after 9/11. American citizens of Japanese descent were deprived of their civil liberties during World War II. People who opposed World War I were jailed for sedition [Eugene V. Debs comes to mind]. "In times of war, the law falls silent," goes Cicero's maxim, quoted in the film by Surratt's prosecutor, Joseph Holt (Danny Huston). And so it seems, no matter the times.
The Conspirator is a good movie that could have been great, but watch it anyway. :-)
