Norman Jewison’s Al Pacino classic American legal dramedy …And Justice for All (1979) is one of my all-time favorite films. Written by the then-married screenwriters Valerie Curtin and Barry Levinson, their diverse representations of American society – corrupt judges, spineless lawyers, railroaded citizens, emotionally worn lawyers who care, and the lack of positive female representation – makes for a rather authentic critique of the USA of 1979. And is not radically different 40 years later.
In one of his finest performances, Al Pacino portrays defense attorney Arthur Kirkland. A divorcee who has a passion for defending the innocent, while loathing the obligation to defend the guilty just as effectively.
Watch: the video of our 50 Best Films of 1979
Minutes into it, we see Ralph Agee (Robert Christian), a tall Black man dressed in drag, being booked into jail. Humiliated and afraid, Agee is led to the row of cells where he is ordered to take off his dress in plain view. The chorus of cat calls from multitudes of men along the corridor would be terrifying in real life to say the least. So it is little wonder that Agee is adamant he cannot go to prison for his supposed role in a robbery. Kirkland does his best to assuage his fears, promising him that he can get Ralph a probation deal as a first-time offender.
Another client of Kirkland’s is Jeff McCullaugh, arrested in a case of mistaken identity. Though Kirkland gathers all of the evidence that he asserts clears McCullaugh, hard-nosed Judge Fleming (John Forsythe) refuses to accept it for being three days late. Fleming has Kirkland sent to jail for threatening him, and is one of the most despised judges in Baltimore for his antipathy towards anyone who stands on the wrong side of the courtroom.
To Kirkland’s chagrin, he is appointed as Judge Fleming’s defense counsel on a charge of rape of a young woman named Leah Shepard (Teri Wootten). Kirkland still harbors much resentment towards the callous judge, but does not stand down from his appointment.
Read: 1979 in Film – Breaking Away
One of the very few female characters in …And Justice for All is Christine Lahti’s Gail Packer, a lawyer on the Ethics Committee who calls in Kirkland and other attorneys for questioning. The witch hunt focused on lawyers, however, does not to apply to judges. Even as Judge Fleming has been charged with rape, and Judge Rayford (Jack Warden) exhibits suicidal behavior (sitting on his chamber ledge for lunches, for one), the Committee is hard at work to appear it is fulfilling its mission, while showing no real results.
Packer and Kirkland begin a romantic relationship after a hearing, which probably more so serves the purpose of keeping both of them sane in an increasingly unjust, chaotic courthouse culture. A catalyst for ruptured mental seams among colleagues/friends is lawyer Jay Porter’s (Jeffrey Tambor) increasingly erratic behavior, after he gets a murderer off on a technicality, and commits murder again.
While Gail and Arthur are together in his apartment, Jay shows up drunk, and breaks the news. He later shaves his head, and ends up being hospitalized for a reckless courthouse corridor meltdown. As Arthur tends to his friend as he’s about to go there via ambulance, he asks his lawyer friend Warren Fresnell (Larry Bryggman) to step in for him at Ralph Agee’s hearing with a corrected report that should secure Agee freedom. Fresnell goes to lunch, and tries to cheat thousands of dollars out of a client. His greed being the priority, he appears to court late, and it gets Agee three years in prison.
Read: 1979 in Film – Mad Max
The next important scene in the film is one of the most iconic in cinematic history. It is night, and Fresnell is about to pull out of a parking garage. Kirkland emerges, and starts bashing Fresnell’s car with his briefcase. Kirkland angrily demands to hear what happened Agee’s hearing. An eventually callous stream of logic comes over Fresnell, concluding that the prison sentence can be appealed. Kirkland’s painfully exasperated responses of: “Don’t you even care?” and “They’re just people!” are filled with the raw mixed emotions of rage, grief, and defeat.
Kirkland is further driven over the edge when his other wronged client Jeff McCullaugh has a mental breakdown, and creates a hostage situation to which Arthur is called to. And McCullaugh provides another gut-wrenching reveals to proceedings.
Arthur’s anchor to reality is his Grandpa Sam, who is ironically slipping away into senility. The man who put him through law school can never remember what his grandson does for a living. Perhaps, this is an intentional metaphor from writers Curtin and Levinson. Kirkland can barely cope with his own profession which is full of tragedies and injustices, so why should his role model recall what is chipping away at Art’s psyche?
Listen: Podcast 79 on the Films of 1979
Later, one of Kirkland’s clients, an older corrupt, wealthy man frequently in the company of young prostitutes, gives Kirkland the evidence that he needs against Judge Fleming. At the trial, the older judge sits on the defendant’s side of the courtroom for once in his life, with the poise of a perverse Clark Gable. He remarks to Kirkland that he’d “like to see” Leah Shepard again, who sits shaking uncontrollably with severe PTSD.
As Arthur Kirkland, disgusted with backroom mechanisms that can get a person of prestige off on serious charges regardless of guilt or innocence, Al Pacino delivers a climactic one-man-fueled showdown. His declarations to all present forever etched into the filmic canon:
“You’re out of order! You’re out of order! The whole trial is out of order! They’re out of order! That man, that sick, crazy, depraved man, raped and beat that woman there, and he’d like to do it again!”
…And Justice for All is of historic significance for several reasons. It simultaneously presents American men as predators, victims, and grand wielders of power. Women are represented primarily by characters of ruthless ambition (Packer), rape victim (Shepard), and prostitutes. Two months after the film’s October 1979 release in the U.S., the United Nations created The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), to be later effective in 1981. The United States signed, but to this day has never ratified the international treaty of rights for women, yet nearly 200 other nation-states have.
Read: 1979 in Film – Kramer vs Kramer
To this, I say that the film serves as a pre-emptive strike, a call to action for the systemic travesties that the American patriarchal structure spread across all societal institutions has perpetrated. And 40 years later, still shows no rehabilitative efforts.
Academy members recognized the societal importance of the critiques in this satirical drama of epic proportions, and nominated Al Pacino for Best Actor, and Valerie Curtin and Barry Levinson for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen at the 1980 Academy Awards. Pacino lost to Dustin Hoffman for Kramer vs. Kramer, and Curtin and Levinson lost to Steve Tesich for Breaking Away.
Later, Norman Jewison and Barry Levinson directed dramas pertaining to injustices involving male-on-male violence: Jewison’s A Soldier’s Story (1984), and Levinson’s Sleepers (1996). One can’t help but think that their association with such productions are fruits born of the still-ripening vines of the outstanding American masterpiece …And Justice for All.
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