REVIEW: Chadwick Boseman gets to the truth in ‘Marshall’
The Office of Student Life’s Film and Speaker Series hosted a screening of “Marshall” Jan. 27 in the SSCB Lecture Hall. The movie was hosted in conjunction with the First-Year Seminar’s Common Reader Program. The screening was followed by a discussion-based questions and answer segment led by Comeka Anderson Diaz, visiting lecturer in criminology.
The film is about a young Thurgood Marshall (Chadwick Boseman), the first African-American Supreme Court Justice who is called to a conservative Connecticut on behalf of the NAACP. He was tasked with representing Joseph Spell (Sterling K. Brown), a black man being accused of the rape and attempted murder of Eleanor Strubing (Kate Hudson), a wealthy white woman that he chauffeured for. Marshall is assigned to team up with Sam Friedman (Josh Gad), a local Jewish lawyer who specializes in insurance cases and has never handled a criminal case. The two work to build up a hard defense against the prosecution and Joseph Spell is ultimately found not guilty.
I really liked how the film did not stray away from the racist and anti-Semitic themes of the time period, and the movie emphasized exactly how hard Marshall and Friedman had to work to overcome the almost insurmountable odds of the case against their client. Watching Marshall and Friedman cast doubt upon the testimony of the prosecution and convince the prejudice court audience and jury that their client was, in fact, innocent of all the crimes he was accused of was not only satisfying but somehow therapeutic.
As the speaker for this screening, Diaz facilitated a great discussion. Diaz serves as a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, the Downtown Group, the Texas Bar College, the Pro Bono College, the American Bar Association, and the Houston Lawyers Association. In her spare time, Diaz. dedicates time to pro bono legal work in her local community, such as Election Protection, Will-a-Thon for Seniors, Volunteer Income Tax Assistance, and Houston Immigration Legal Services Collaborative.
Since “Marshall” centered around trial law and court proceedings, we started off the discussion talking about some of the organizations Diaz was involved in that related back to this theme. Election Protection was a big one because this is an organization that goes out to ensure that citizens receive fair and affordable access to the polls so that they can fulfill their civic duty of voting.
For example, in 2012 some of the election poll stations in Texas City were not actually open for early voting and Election Protection jumped in and filed papers against the city. This resulted in these specific poll stations staying open longer after election day to accommodate these individuals who were not able to go to attend the early voting times due to the polls closure.
Diaz also talked about the movie and how certain themes still exist today, but in a certain context. Similar to the time period the movie was set in, there were laws against minorities and now, in today’s society, it has shifted to gerrymandering and other systems set up to disadvantage these same demographics. She also admired how Thurgood Marshall addressed his grievances with all the injustices he was dealing with in court with the press.
After every court proceeding, he would walk out to the horde of reporters and voiced his disdain of his treatment so that he could make headlines. He used this as a platform to get his story out instead of being silenced by unfair sanctions.
“Marshall” was the first movie I have seen from the Student Life Film and Speaker Series that caught me off guard. I went into the movie without any background knowledge of the film, and I assumed I would be indifferent to the showing, but that was far from the case. It was a great movie that everyone enjoyed, and it also helped to spur the great discussion with Diaz afterward.
