Films for Our Times: “12 Angry Men”
Fourth in an ongoing series, Films for Our Times
From the opening shot — panning up the sturdy pillars of a courthouse, topped with the inscription, “The due administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government” — this 1957 film, “12 Angry Men,” just happens to speak to early-21st century America on myriad matters: justice, democracy, immigration, white supremacy.
But mostly it enlightens about anger. The operative word of this title is, not “men” even though masculinity is now being tested for toxicity, but “anger” — how it distorts, how it fuels, and how it drives, both individuals and groups, to potentially tragic actions.
Today, for example, in this presidential election cycle pitting the incumbent president Joseph Biden against former president Donald Trump, anger just may deliver the tragic result of the re-election of Mr. Trump, who this time has announced plans to usher in governance that is effectively fascist — strong-man rule — doing away with democracy (see: Project 2025). How can this happen? It is constantly speculated that there are a lot of angry people in America now — why, it is rarely specified (our economy is the most vigorous in the world) — but the anger does exist and Mr. Trump is a master manipulator of it (“I am your retribution”). Which may explain why Trump, despite his well-publicized plans to do away with our democracy, leads in the polls at this moment.
What is tonic in this film — so stirring in our acidly cynical times — is the pushback to that anger and that tragic outcome. Because, in the end, this film’s jury listens to reason, not to the anger — -thanks to a juror who in today’s parlance might be called a “bleeding heart” — and it does the right thing. To all the bleeding hearts just about bled out by today’s extremism and lawlessness — anger weaponized to historic levels — this film is for us. (The inscription at the top is from George Washington, in a letter to Edmund Randolph in 1789.)
Courtroom dramas are good for black-and-white delineation of conflict. That is the case here, not only in the film’s black-and-white imagery, but the playing-out of a murder trial in the contentious deliberations inside a jury room, thus the number “12.” Echoing our present-day disaffection with the law and justice, the judge opens the drama by intoning, in bored voice, his instructions to the jury: that “premeditated murder is the most serious charge tried in our criminal courts,” that they must “separate fact from fancy,” that a guilty verdict means the death sentence, that if there is “reasonable doubt” — the viewer’s heart lifts at the word “reasonable” — -they must vote “not guilty.” Concluding, the judge says “You are faced with a grave responsibility. Thank you, gentlemen.”
In my notes, I noted “Problem: all men, no women,” but that problem is signaled in the title. One also notes: All the men are white. But what seems a nonstarter today — the lack of diversity — reveals, over this riveting film’s course, an X-ray of the “thinking” of a phenomenon plaguing today’s America: a resurgent white supremacy. For the accused in question is one of “those people” — never identified by ethnicity, just one of “those people,” meaning: not-white. Also meaning “violent,” “born liars,” “Human life doesn’t mean as much to them,” implying whites are superior in their humanity. Sound familiar? Here the accused is a “kid,” 18 years old, from “the slums” — in the ’50s “the slums” were as feared as terrorist cells are today — who’s accused of murdering his father.
The antagonists, the mouthpieces of white supremacy, take the lead, forcefully, at the outset, operating from a presumption that all will agree this is “an open-and-shut case.” Indeed, in the preliminary voice vote, 11 to 1, they dominate.
Then comes the pushback, from the lone holdout: Juror Number 8, played by the iconic American actor Henry Fonda. (The characters have no names, only numbers.) After he argues that the “kid” has been “kicked around all his life” and earns the “bleeding heart” label, and after “the old man” among the jurors pushes back against the “born liar” attack on “those people” — “Only a ignorant man believes that!” — he chances it to propose a secret ballot, to accommodate the big majority. It’s the moment of greatest risk for him and for justice, and Fonda shows it in his eyes. Fortunately, the old man sides with him — and it is game on, as the Fonda character peels off the other jurors, one by one, using Reason to get to “reasonable doubt.”
Equally detailed is the anger of the antagonists and how each angry man reveals it. One of them, played by Ed Begley, is an out-and-out racist. The chief antagonist, though, is driven more by the “kid” than “the slum” element, as he reveals early on: His own son, now 23, whom he was determined to “make a man” after the son fled a fight, he hasn’t seen in two years. So embittered — “Kids! You work your heart out for them!” — he is fanatic that that “kid,” the accused, be put to death. Calling this angriest of the men in that jury room a “sadist,” the Fonda character makes the key point: personal grievance, not fact, drives this juror. Played by Lee J. Cobb, a powerful character actor who always brought complexity to his roles, makes this anger human.
Other sources of anger are sociological: From a salesman to a house-painter to an athletic coach, the anger is portrayed as working-class sensitivity to loss of status to immigrants — a tension resonating today. This tension is searingly enacted in a scene between the salesman (played by Jack Warden) and an immigrant watchmaker (played by George Voskovec). The latter has had the temerity to suggest to the salesman that perhaps he does not fully understand the term “reasonable doubt.” To which the salesman explodes:
“What do you mean, I ‘don’t understand’? Boy, how do you like this guy? I’m telling you, they’re all alike. They come over here, running for their life, and, before they take a deep breath, they’re telling us how to run the show — huh. Boy, the arrogance of this guy!”
The salesman generates one of my favorite scenes: with the Fonda character, during a recess. The former goes after the latter: “So what’re you getting out of this — kicks? Did somebody bump you on the head one time and you never got over it?” “Maybe.” “You know, you do-gooders are all alike. Always blowing your stacks, why’re you wastin’ our time?” (He wants jury duty over so he can get to a baseball game.) As night follows day, the “do-gooder” crack must follow from “bleeding heart.”
Democracy also comes to the fore, pointed to not surprisingly by the immigrant, midway in proceedings that have broken down in arguing. The juror rises, “I beg pardon,” but is cut off by the Begley character: “‘I beg pardon.’ What’re you so polite about?” Replies the juror, “The same reason you’re not. It was the way I was brought up.” He goes on:
“This fighting….: That’s not why we are here, to fight. We have a responsibility. This I have always thought is a remarkable thing about democracy, that we are — -what is the word? — notified by mail to come down to this place to decide the guilt or the innocence of a man we’ve never heard of before. We have nothing to gain or lose by our verdict. This is one of the reasons why we are strong. We should not make it a personal thing. Thank you.”
Anxious, at present, for American democracy and our fierce internal fighting, I paused and teared up.
It was only afterwards, when I thought of the title again, that I realized it wasn’t only the antagonists who were angry; they all were, including the “good guys.” Anger of all kinds — bigoted, moral, personality conflicts and crotchets — get expressed in that jury room. In life, the good guys would have come by their humanity and equanimity, and brought those vital qualities to the life-and-death task of deciding a murder trial, only after doing battle with their own inner demons. I imagine that was how the Fonda character came by his philosophical observations. When the house-painter mutters to him, “Nice buncha guys,” he responds, “They’re about the same as anywhere else.” And when the old man becomes upset at another ad hominem attack from the salesman, the Fonda character says to him quietly, “He can’t hear you, he never will.”
This magnanimous drama, though, shows some antagonists do hear. When the chief one, played by Cobb, rants about a witness, saying, “He’s an old man, how can he be positive about anything,” Cobb, verging on old himself, has an “Aha” moment of recognition. Elsewhere we see him struggling to get to his good side — “I’m as sentimental as the next guy”: He’s not — his volcanic anger interferes — but at least he’s glimpsed his better self. It is good to remember this, in our polarized enmity.
“12 Angry Men,” from the “silent decade” of the ’50s, speaks clearly to our angry present, dramatizing how anger blinds and deafens — and makes bad situations so much worse. (When I saw the New York Times’ article applauding TV portrayals of women’s rage, I thought, “No-o-o-o-o.”) This film, based on a play by Reginald Rose, is a well-made drama, abiding by the Aristotelian unities of time (one day), place (jury room), and action (reaching a verdict from wildly conflicting places). The Fonda character takes what once was called a “hero’s journey”: seeking the Holy Grail, doing combat against a formidable antagonist, here an array of them, and returning with it: justice. (Fonda and Rose were the film’s producers.) The acting is superb: In addition to those cited, the jury includes E.G. Marshall, Jack Klugman, Edward Binns, Joseph Sweeney, Martin Balsam, John Fiedler, and Robert Webber. Director Sidney Lumet does great ensemble work, notably in a late scene where the very force of the out-and-out racist’s words repel each juror, one by one.
Best of all: Bleeding hearts have, in the Fonda character, a map and an argument — plenty of argument — in the struggle against un-reason and collapse. We carry on.
