Inherit The Wind: Legal Drama #3

 

God damn!  This got me all riled up!  For those of you who do not know (ya dummies!), Inherit The Wind is a film based on the Scopes/Monkey trials, starring Spencer Tracy and Fredric March as two dueling attorneys.  March plays the riveting Brady, a religious orator under the guise of a lawyer, who uses linguistic tricks and plays on people’s steadfast spiritual associations to sway the courts.  My boy Tracy plays Drummond, who seeks to defend freedom of thought and acts (at least in the courtroom) as a paragon of logic.

This movie was directed by Stanley Kramer, who is known for directing films with strong, passionate, bleeding-heart liberal messages.  He also directed On The Beach, which I absolutely loved, and Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?, starring Tracy and his one true lady love, the Ms. Katherine Hepburn.  This film is no exception.  But I get all jazzed up at this one, because the issues addressed in this film are more *fundamentally* ideological.  Beach is about nuclear war and Dinner is about racism, and both are incredibly well-done.  But this film puts on display, the clearest way possible (a courtroom, for chrissakes!), one of the plainest dichotomies between people – those who ride the tide, and those who actually think thoughts.

This film goes into the pomp and circumstance of law – the tricky moments, the getting-riled-up-in-the-courtroom, the passion and dedication and oratory.  It has an absolutely adorable and snarky Gene Kelly as a news reporter whose paper finances Drummonds expensive, and who serves as a TomServo to the entire court case, making sarcastic and snide comments and mocking the religious beliefs of the masses.  There are incredibly powerful and beautiful performances that are, sure, a little ham-handed.  But Spencer Tracy brings such an awesome sincerity to his performance that it more than makes up for the cheese and pomp.  And there is just something about the whole impassioned and riveting ordeal that tingles my heartknobs and rocks my world.

Nancy Is A Laywer?

Inherit The Wind had more of the pomp and circumstance of law, that I have discussed before, that I have shied away from.  But while watching it, there was something neat about at least imagining that there was a truth that I could defend, a sense of pure and unquestionable justice that I could be a part of.

Now obviously, I know there is no pure and unquestionable justice or fairness or truth.  Those are not things that exist in the real world.  But this court case illustrated to me the closest that I might get in my career.  And that is simply this : asking questions is always a good thing.  Self-satisfied awareness and certainty in your base truth is probably not a good thing.

This movie both challenges and utilizes the idea that you can fall back on your base.  Watching Brady tie every question back to his religious core was eerie, because it didn’t take a seconds thought on his part.  Everything came back to his base, his one truth.  At the same time, so did Drummond, but his one truth was that you need to ask some fucking questions in order to understand the world.

Drummond’s truth, for me, is symbolic of the truth of Law in general, *and* it’s a little paradoxical.  I say that because if you are really defending a case, then you have a one truth that you have to tie everything back to.  But you react this truth by drilling it down to it’s core, by consistently asking questions and removing all of the fluff until you reach it’s base.

I should say that I don’t actually imagine myself defending cases in court, but more like helping little old people write their wills or helping a young couple navigate the legal ramifications of purchasing a piece of land next to a national park or something.  Because that’s what law actually is, because people don’t make movies about that, so I have to pretend that Drummond is shouting about Intellectual Property Law or Cruise Ship Accident Law in order to get excited about my future.  So, ya know, perspective.  I know that work in the legal world is excessive hard work and has very little, if anything, to what is shown in this movie.  Cases like this happen once a century.  Watching this movie and saying that you want to be a lawyer is like watching Matlida and saying you want to be a teacher.   

I've always dreamed of being a teacher because I want to watch children make pencils fly with their minds.

But there is something very appealing to be about systematically and thoroughly dismantling the base truths that people use to guide their moral compass, because I truly believe any base truth that is not fluid and subject to change and growth is a dangerous thing.  In that sense, I do believe in a pure and unquestionable justice, but only in that it is questioning.  Allowing yourself to evolve with the new evidence and ideas that are presented to you.  A careful evolution and analysis of propositions is essentially what a trial is.  So, I guess according to my own logic, I *really* want to be a lawyer.  I mean, whether I, as an emotional human being, actually respect the logical conclusions that I reach and execute consistency with my conclusions and actions, will probably be more of a deciding factor of my professions than the shit I write on my blog. But as for now, lawyer away!!!