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3 stars (out of four)

The flashes of heat in our current presidential campaign are mere sparks to the flames of 1968, that pivotal period in the conflagration known as the Sixties.

There were years of stoking. Growing rage over Vietnam. A civil rights struggle. A generational rebellion like none before or since. An establishment angry over what it deemed decadence and coarseness in youthful garb and speech. And, just before the Chicago Democratic Convention, the killings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. Hope went up in smoke.

After the riots came a court case trying protest organizers on charges of conspiracy. Instead of resolution, the trial of the Chicago Seven managed more division and derision—tragedy evolving into farce.

Brett Morgen’s documentary “Chicago 10” (the “10” of the title also includes Bobby Seale and defense attorneys William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass, who received contempt sentences) mixes archival footage of the riots and motion-captured animation of the trial. Morgen has an advantage over those who lived through those days. He didn’t.

Co-director of the superb documentary “The Kid Stays in the Picture,” Morgen was born in 1968, just after the convention. Whatever his strengths and failings, he doesn’t have a dog in this old fight. That said, the documentary, which played at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, does seem more in sympathy with the anti-war defendants. Yippies Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin get more background footage and airtime than former Mayor Richard J. Daley, the government lawyers or Judge Julius Hoffman, who presided over the carnival-like courtroom. The defendants seem fun-filled, colorful, if frequently obnoxious, while Judge Hoffman’s pronouncements have the air of a substitute teacher losing control of the class.

Until  we reach the most infamous episode, when defendant Bobby Seale is gagged and bound to his chair, which is chilling to watch years later, even in animation.

“Chicago 10” has its problems. The authentic newsreels and brightly hued animation are a schizoid mix. In one unfortunate scene in the park, the demonstrators are treated with realism while the approaching police resemble cardboard, sci-fi invaders of a Saturday morning cartoon.

Out of thousands of pages of trial transcript, Morgen often selectively opts for the funny: Judge Hoffman mangling defendants’ names; Allen Ginsberg reciting an ode to a wet dream; Rubin lobbing a paper airplane at the witness box.

A newscaster unschooled in yoga prosaically pronounces Ginsberg’s “om” chant as “um.” During the convention, another reporter finds neighborhood kids playing a new game called cops vs. demonstrators, pounding each other with plastic bats and admitting it’s a sport without winners.

Morgen’s best achievement is the news footage, more detailed looks at events outside the Conrad Hilton Hotel and in Chicago parks than you typically see on TV rehashes. He also strengthens his case by avoiding outright commentary. Though inconsistent, “Chicago 10” viscerally evokes a time and its extreme moods, more window than a screed on events all sides remember as seismic in divisiveness and national sorrow.

sismith@tribune.com

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