Clint Eastwood (San Francisco, 1930) was 15 when World War II ended, 33 when Kennedy was killed, and 45 when Franco died. Dean of American filmmakers, he is also the most “American” of the living, the artist who represents like no other the pure values of the United States. Most important, individualism, understood not in a selfish or narcissistic way but as an exaltation of personal freedom, inseparable from responsibility.
In Eastwood’s films, it is not so much a question of the system (even if it can also be since it contributes, in the same sense, to distrust of the American government) as of the fact that his own failures never justify or legitimize that the individual, Ultimately, he is always capable of deciding for himself what is right or wrong.
Therefore, the final burden falls on him and not on the system. This is exactly the opposite of what we see in Ken Loach’s films, where society itself is always responsible for the evil of men.
Already in Dirty Harry (Donald Siegel, 1971) and the following, we saw Eastwood as a lone hero who has no problem breaking the law when he feels it is an obstacle to making the bad guys pay, posing the dilemma between what is legal and what is right. In his films with Sergio Leone in the role The good, the bad and the ugly (1966), a heavenly scenario is proposed for the “libertarian” Eastwood like the far west where the power of the State and its institutions is non-existent.
The justice of these films would be like neoliberal economics, Eastwood seems to believe that there exists this “invisible hand” of Adam Smith by which the “moral” market regulates itself better than when the bureaucracy, the “lawyers” and the monstrous This “Leviathan”‘s machinery interferes, complicating things.
Justin’s dilemma
In Jury No. 2 We see what happens to Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult, who is superb). Journalist for a light magazine, married to a beautiful young woman with whom he will have a much-desired baby, he leaves behind a complicated past of alcoholism. The suburban reporter’s placid, hard-earned life in beautiful, rural Georgia is interrupted when He is named a juror in a murder case. The accused is a thug (Gabriel Basso) from the region, imprisoned preventively for the murder of his girlfriend after fighting with her in a bar.
The judicial genre is always grateful for its ancestral approach (the case), its environment (the trial) and its outcome (the sentence). In this case, Eastwood is primarily interested in show (with absolute fidelity) the deliberation process of a jurywith its legal subtleties (which he hates so much) and its routines.
In a film like this, where the emphasis is not on the trial as usual but on the deliberation of the jury, it is impossible not to recall the great classic of the genre, Twelve merciless men (1957), in which Sidney Lumet masterfully shows us the greatness of the institution by involving society in the transcendental decisions which also belong to it. As decide on a person’s life, nothing less.
Here, the vision of the institution is much less benevolent. The crux of the problem is thatThe protagonist knows that the accused is not guilty because he himself killed, accidentally, one night of heavy rain, hitting the girl with the car. An act of which he was unaware because he thought he had hit a deer.
The problem is that with his past of alcoholism, if he confesses and saves innocent people, he condemns himself because when he leaves a cocktail bar, no judge will believe that he was sober. And in the United States, a country where there are no less than two million people in prison and the law is much more punitive than in Europewhich results in eternal prison sentences. What is poor Nicolas Hoult doing? Save yourself and avoid one injustice at the cost of allowing another? Or sacrifice yourself to free a stranger of dubious ilk?
Jury No. 2far from being an exaltation of this “democratic institution” as it is presented to the jury in the first sequence, pilloris it. Kemp/Hoult, trying to save himself and his conscience, acts like Henry Fonda from Twelve merciless mentrying to convince the other inquisitors that the accused is innocent, while everyone considers him guilty. But things don’t go as smoothly as in Lumet’s humanist film, here almost everyone is a victim of their prejudices when they are in no hurry to get rid of the mess and go about their business.
To “help” the protagonist, an efficient prosecutor (Toni Colette) who is running for the post of prosecutor (in the United States, it is elective) waving the flag of feminism and its “zero tolerance” for sexist attacks. Because, in a very subtle way, we also see it in the jury, the film too criticizes the excesses of the #MeToo era and the idea that all men, by becoming angry at some point, can be seen as aggressors or murderers in themselves.
With a good script by the young Nobel Prize winner Jonathan A. Abrams, Jury No. 2 is a good film that poses a complex moral dilemma and is at the same time archetypal eastwoodiana. As in Oscar winner No forgiveness (1992), we see a protagonist (from Wiliam Munny to Justin Kemp) with a turbulent past that he struggles to overcome. In this case, redemption can only come through personal sacrifice. If former murderer Munny must risk his life to achieve justice and save his children from poverty, the formerly alcoholic but still young Kemp faces an even more costly and difficult personal sacrifice.
In Eastwood’s later films we frequently saw the idea of the man who defies the rules of the world to do what is right in productions inspired by real stories. In Defile (2016), an airplane pilot crashes the plane into the Hudson River in the middle of Manhattan against the company’s criteria and although he saves the passengers, he is persecuted for it.
In patriotism 3:17 p.m. Train to Paris (2018), young Americans on vacation in Europe confront Islamist terrorists on a train and save everyone thanks to their heroism. and in Richard Jewell (2019), a security guard with little insight but a big heart and a great sense of courtesy, prevents the terrorist attacks at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics from turning into an even bigger massacre.
Jury #2 This seems to take us, in this sense, into new territory of ambiguity for Eastwood, giving a twist to the sacrifice required of the protagonist. Note that in Defile And Richard Jewellthe director also acts as a vigilante since the two real characters suffered negative consequences for their actions and with these films he also wants to restore order by justifying them.
However, even if in his new and perhaps last film – we have been writing the same thing for years – Eastwood questions the laws of longevity and seems to want, in a way, to question himself, in reality he don’t do it. As a good libertarian, Eastwood has never believed in institutions, but the fact that the system is not only not perfect but is often manifestly unjust does not mean that he is not still a moralist.
