The Film Comment Letter: Card-Carrying Member ♣️

August 30, 2024 The Film Comment Letter: Card-Carrying Member ♣️ View in browser   |   filmcomment.com August 30, 2024 WEBSITE   |   PODCAST   |   LATEST Dear Readers, This week's Letter looks at the portrayal of the criminal justice system in cinema—and the place of cinema within the criminal justice system. Our opening piece is J. Hoberman's incisive review of the new French film The Goldman Case , which premiered at Cannes in 2023. Directed by Cédric Kahn, the film chronicles the 1976 retrial of Pierre Goldman, the Jewish left-wing revolutionary accused of committing murder during a robbery of a pharmacy. Goldman's principled insistence on his own innocence—and on redirecting the focus of the trial from his own predicament to larger societal questions of racism, anti-Semitism, and power—became a flash point in France. As Jim writes, Kahn's film makes for a riveting courtroom drama without the certainties and sleights of hand common in the genre; t... read