With former President of the United States Donald Trump now indicted on four counts relating to attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, here’s a look at motion pictures where leaders are put on trial.
To Kill a King (2003) – full movie available on YouTube
I confess to possessing little sympathy with the plight of King Charles I in Mike Barker’s (Best Laid Plans, 1999) watchable English Civil War drama. As depicted by Rupert Everett, he’s arrogant, petulant, and totally untrustworthy. He seems to accept parliament’s mild terms for peace, all while plotting further bloodshed in the name of the ‘divine right of Kings’.
To his credit, Charles faces his end bravely. But despite his the charitable words to those who condemned him (‘He told me he had forgiven all his enemies, and hoped God would forgive them also; and commanded us, and all the rest of my brothers and sisters, to forgive them’), his son, the restored Charles II, enacts brutal revenge on those regicides he could get his hands on.
Nuremberg (2000) – full movie available on YouTube
Brian Cox (Succession) pulls off a remarkably plausible portrait of Hitler’s right hand man Hermann Göring in this TV movie from 2000. The obese, drug addicted Reichsmarschall is captured by initially friendly US troops but is soon thrown into a Nuremberg prison to await trial with other surviving Nazi leaders.
Ironically, the spartan jail regime does wonders for Göring’s health and he emerges as a formidable figure at the trial. He dominates many of his former comrades and initially runs rings round US prosecutor Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson (Alec Baldwin). Only when Brit Sir David Maxwell Fyfe (Christopher Plummer) urges Jackson to concentrate on harrowing testimony from witnesses is Göring’s goose finally cooked. He escapes hanging by swallowing a keistered cyanide capsule the night before his planned execution.
Petain (1993) – Apple TV
France’s increasingly senile Vichy leader and former ‘Saviour of Verdun’, Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain (Jacques Dufilho) cut a pathetic figure by the time of his trial in July 1945. His first world war record and fragile health resulted in a commuted death sentence and exile for life to the desolate Île d’Yeu, where Petain was confined until his death in July 1951, aged 95.
Jean Marboeuf’s movie is talky and static but is worth a watch for those interested in the era. Acting honours go to Jean Yanne as unscrupulous Vichy prime minister Pierre Laval, who, unlike Petain, was executed.
Argentina, 1985 (2022) – Amazon Prime
With recent news of the EU’s apparent acceptance of Argentina’s name for the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), Santiago Mitre’s Argentina, 1985 is a timely watch.
The movie follows the 1985 trial of the Juntas, when members of the dictatorship who ruled Argentina under the ‘National Reorganisation Process’ were tried for crimes including extrajudicial murder, torture, and the abduction of civilians.
The Junta members have experienced lawyers and, coupled with death threats against the public prosecutor, Julio César Strassera (Ricardo Darín), and his novice team, prospects of a fair trial look grim. But the sheer weight of horrific witness testimony and the Strassera’s powerful closing argument (‘Your Honours: never again!’) mean some measure of justice is dispensed.
The King Who Never Was (2023) – Netflix
Admittedly not a movie, but worthy of inclusion, is this new Netflix true crime documentary series on the last heir to the Italian throne, the sleazy Prince Vittorio Emanuele di Savoia. In 1978 he was accused and then later acquitted of murdering 19-year German tourist Dirk Hamer.
I hadn’t heard of the case but was aware of the generally unsavoury reputation the House of Savoy had accrued over the centuries; The King Who Never Was certainly confirmed this impression.
The Lady (2011) – Amazon Rent/Buy
Luc Besson’s (Lucy) hagiography of Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi (Michelle Yeoh) has aged badly in the years since its release. Imprisoned for decades by the military, the Nobel Peace Prize- winning politician is the daughter of Aung San, the assassinated ‘Father of the Nation’ of modern Myanmar. The film depicts her long imprisonment and relationship with British husband Michael Aris (David Thewlis), who, together with her children, was banned from the country.
Eventually released in 2010, Aung San Suu Kyi won a landslide election in 2015, becoming de facto prime minister. But her defence of Burma’s military, denial of their genocidal activities against the Muslim Rohingya and persecution of journalists tarnished her reputation. In 2020, she was overthrown by the military and has faced multiple corruption trials, resulting in a 27-year prison sentence.
Emperor (2012) – Amazon Prime, Fawesome, FilmRise, Amazon Rent/Buy
Not so much a trial film, Peter Webber’s (Girl with The Pearl Earring) picture is more about how one trial was avoided, specifically that of Japan’s Emperor Hirohito.
Whilst war criminals such as former Japanese war-time prime minister Hideki Tojo are tried and executed, Brigadier General Bonner Fellers (Matthew Fox) colludes with General Douglas MacArthur (Tommy Lee Jones) to get Hirohito off the hook and keep his subjects in line.
The fig leaf they used was the Emperor’s decision to order a surrender (against the wishes of some miliary leaders) after the nuclear detonations above Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hardly a profile in courage. The subject was also covered in Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov’s The Sun (2005).
Il Divo (2008) – Curzon, Amazon Rent/Buy
Paolo Sorrentino’s portrait of the Mafia-connected seven-times Italian Christian Democrat prime minister Giulio Andreotti (played by his regular collaborator, chameleon-like Toni Servillo) follows his seventh election in 1992. We see his failed bid for the presidency of the Italian Republic, the murders of his former political/financial connections, the Tangentopoli bribery scandal, and trial in 1995, as well as yet another failed attempt to convict the slippery ‘Divine Julius’.
Sorrentino revisited Italian politics with 2018’s Loro, a biopic of the late Silvio Berlusconi, in which Servillo excellently captured the essence of the skeezy media tycoon/politician.
The Last Emperor (1987) – Amazon Rent/Buy
Ineffective final Emperor of China Puyi (John Lone) faces a comeuppance of a kind when he’s handed over to the People’s Republic of China in 1950 by the Soviets.
A defendant at the Tokyo Trials, the former ‘Son of Heaven’ was imprisoned as a war criminal and ‘re-educated’ by the authorities. He was released in 1959 as a Communist party member and model citizen. Pretty lenient treatment when one considers Puyi’s involvement with the cruel Japanese government of Manchuria during his time as puppet emperor of his ancestral homeland in Northern China.
Danton (1983) – full movie available on YouTube
Andrzej Wajda’s (Ashes & Diamonds) superb adaptation of Stanisława Przybyszewska’s 1929 stage play The Danton Case features one of Gerard Depardieu’s finest screen performances in the title role.
Sickened by the increasing violence of the French Revolution he helped spearhead, popular leader Georges Danton is marked down for death by his former friend and ally Maximilien Robespierre (Wojciech Pszoniak), head of the notorious Committee of Public Safety. The charismatic Danton is put on trial and duly guillotined, but not before the seeds of Robespierre’s own downfall are sown.
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