As my Netflix subscription had ended and I had no plans of renewing it due to my lack of time to watch anything, I decided to watch the classics available on YouTube that I’d heard of but never had the chance to enjoy.
The first movie that came to mind was Henry Ford’s ‘Twelve Angry Men’. Unfortunately, the movie was divided into zillions of parts that were a few minutes long preceded with spooky AI generated ads that promoted health benefits of certain water filters and herbs (imagine the deceitful combination of ads and bots, there goes my trust in modern society out of the window!).
After fifteen minutes of alternating between the movie and the bot ads, I decided that watching more expressionless bots could drive me mad and decided to look for an alternative which I found in a play by the same name produced by a Floridan theatre called the ‘Delray Beach Playhouse’ in 2012.
The opening scene was of a jury of twelve men entering the room where they’ll be deliberating the sentence of a teenager accused of planning and murdering his father.
Although everyone seems to have decided on death penalty, one voice rises against it (juror 8) and starts questioning their decision based on the evidence provided in the trial.
Consequently, one by one the jurors start changing their mind after discovering that their judgements are biased because of the accused ethnicity and background, their own personal issues and even worse, because a few want to go home early although the life of another human being rests on them.
However, arguments and tension erupt between the jurors due to different personalities and opinions coming to clash and they end up re-examining their own principles.
The play ends with the jurors leaving the room after coming up with a final verdict after almost two hours of intense entertainment. Everything in the play is made to capture your attention: starting with the fact that it’s an all men jury that are anonymous to the viewer and to each other but for the numbers that the chosen moderator would give them based on their position on the table, to the setup that although simple (a meeting table with twelve chairs) yet is the place where a decision of life or death would be taken.
As the plot advances, the viewer starts learning enough about each character’s life to understand where their point of view stems from.
The characters represent what American society looked like in the 50s: immigrants, war veterans and working-class men with limited interest of the wider world surrounding them.
But the bigger question that remain is: how fair and reliable is a jury trial generally? ‘Twelve Angry Men’ is a teleplay written by American playwright and screenwriter Reginald Rose (1920-2002) in 1954. It was inspired by his own experience as a juror on a similar trial which took eight hours of fierce deliberation. The teleplay was then adapted into a feature film directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Henry Fonda as juror 8 in 1957.
The movie was nominated for three academy awards: Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay but didn’t win any. However, it won many other theatrical awards including ‘The Drama League Award’ for ‘Distinguished Revival of a Play’ in 2005.
Also, Reginald Rose won the Writers Guild of America Award twice for the same play in 1958 (Best Written American Drama) and in 1987 (Laurel Award for TV Writing Achievement). ‘Twelve Angry Men’ is powerful and a cordial invitation to consider surrounding circumstances and human nature when scrutinising others. A must-watch.
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
