Wiliam Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe (Sunday, December 29, 2009) (179)

This film follows in a line of recent documentaries made by children of famous people who are dealing with their parent's legacies. Similar to how Nathaniel Kahn dealt with the troubled history of his father, Louis Kahn, and how Aiyana Elliott dealt with her own absent, but brilliant father, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, here Emily and Sarah Kunstler deal with the legacy of their father, ultra-liberal lawyer William Kunstler.

Kunstler become famous for being the main defense attorney in the trial of the so-called Chicago 7. In that case, he turned the courtroom into a stage to show the world that justice in America is not blind, but totally subjective and relative. From there he went on to fight for the rights of prisoners in New York's Attica State Penitentiary, for Native American rights and a slew of leftist causes in the 1970s and 1980s.

In the film, the two daughters speak directly about how they grew up in an era when their father was past his prime and frequently took cases they disagreed with. The knew very well about his history, but sometimes found it hard to defend his actions to their friends. This is a loving and intimate look at his whole life, showing his growth from a rather typical suburban father and lawyer in the 1950s to a long-haired radical fighter who talked openly about drug use in the 1970s.

We see how he was on the forefront of social change through the years, though, from helping the NAACP with Civil Rights cases in the South in the mid-1960, to defending a political group who burned draft records in the late 1960s to the Chicago 7 trial and on. He was not a passive, armchair critic, but an outspoken voice of change.

Overall, the analysis is interesting and compelling. The style is nice, involving many interviews with his colleagues, friends and past relations as well as footage and court sketches from his many famous trials. More interesting than his own history, is the personal, human aspect of the story. The two filmmakers do a very nice job showing how they began to look at his career with a rather skeptical eye and ultimately came to understand their father as a human being with typical faults and several bad choices. Perhaps it is a bit one-sided and possibly too complimentary, but this is not too much of a problem in this affectionate documentary.

Stars: 2.5 of 4