Alas, Poor Atticus! Trials are supposed to be all about winning
Losers to winners
Nowhere is the often-hairbreadth distinction between stories of winning and losing more apparent than in our popular cultural stories about litigation and law. Think of what are typically rated the two greatest courtroom movies: The Verdict and To Kill a Mockingbird. The Verdict (1982) was rated No. 1 for the decade 1975-1984 in the ABA Journal’s August 2015 list of most important legal films of the past century. Although Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) was once hands-down presumed to be the greatest fictional lawyer (according to a 2010 Journal feature), the movie version dropped to No. 3 in the ratings for 1955-1964 in the Journal’s 2015 list. Why does The Verdict featuring Frank Galvin, the self-loathing, unethical and alcoholic plaintiffs lawyer, maintain its popularity? I suspect because The Verdict is a movie about winning.
Although the greatest lines, I think, in David Mamet’s Academy Award-winning screenplay are Galvin’s quasi-religious meditations on justice in his closing argument, the throughline is about Galvin’s transformation from loser to winner, as revealed in several crucial scenes.
In the first, without dialogue, Galvin is transformed (galvanized) by professional purpose when he first visits his paralyzed victim-client in her hospital bed. In the second, his moral compass is readjusted: With the deck stacked against him, Galvin forges the absolute (galvanic) will to do whatever it takes to win after his corrupt doppelganger girlfriend speaks as if from the shadows within himself; she implores him that she can’t stand or afford to be with another loser.
Galvin then has a second transformative moment (emerging from his bathroom panic attack). He embraces his darkness with renewed gusto, doing whatever he must do to win—he cheats, he lies, he steals and even punches out his doppelganger girlfriend after he discovers that she’s a paid employee of the defendant’s villainous and powerful attorney.
Miraculously, despite Galvin’s ethical lapses and illegal conduct, the audience never turns against him because he is a winner. Galvin’s personal redemption is wedded to victory, regardless of the cost.
Curiously, Mamet initially proposed an ambiguous ending that would come after Galvin’s closing argument, leaving the verdict in doubt—the moral balance left in the hands of the juror-audience. The producers, however, knew better. Only one commercial outcome was viable.
promise of victorious outcomes
Contrast The Verdict with the movie To Kill a Mockingbird and Gregory Peck’s redemptive portrayal of Finch. In 2010, the Journal published a tongue-in-cheek termination letter to Finch on behalf of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, anticipating our current predilection for reductionist stories measured by outcomes. The letter, penned by Richard Sweren, producer of Law & Order, began: “Dear Mr. Finch: We regret to inform you that your services as a film hero will no longer be required by this organization.”
Sweren identifies Finch’s multiple failures, including his ultimate failure to “win an acquittal for your client, Mr. Robinson, despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence.” He concludes (with mocking delight): “Moreover, it seems foolhardy to persist in revisiting dated injustices that have now been remedied in our open-minded, post-racial society. And in these challenging economic times, no one profits when audiences don’t feel cheerful and reassured as the final credits roll. ... We trust you will find continued service in the literary world, where consumers may still appreciate quaint, out-of-fashion stories and are known to be more forgiving of a hero’s personal deficiencies.”
Sweren’s right, too. The storylines that capture the popular imagination these days, at least in politics and commercial movies, assuage our losses and momentarily fill our neediness with, at least, the promise of victorious outcomes. We apparently need even more now to think we are winners and by force of will can reshape fate and control our own destiny. For now, this storyline trumps others.
Still, I recall fondly Fitzgerald’s famous lyrical final lines from Gatsby, suggesting American redemption stories for romantic losers, as well: “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. ... And one fine morning—
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
Philip N. Meyer, a professor at Vermont Law School, is the author of
