Press materials for the fact-based courtroom drama “The Goldman Case” make it clear that the filmmakers know that even the title of the film may remind us of another high-profile case. In the email I received announcing the release of this film in the United States: “Twenty years before the O.J. Simpson case, the Goldman trial reflects the political, ideological and racial tensions that marked the 1970s in France and Europe.”
While the email also said this was “considered the trial of the century,” the film is less concerned with how this trial shook the country and more with what happened inside the courtroom.
“The Goldman Case” centers on the mid-1970s trial of Pierre Goldman (Arieh Worthalter), a French left-wing revolutionary who is on trial for an armed robbery and a series of murders he committed in the late 1960s. Although Goldman admits to the robberies—a 1969 attack on a pharmacy that resulted in the deaths of two women—he consistently maintains his innocence.
Goldman is, without a doubt, a passionate defendant. He often stirs up a storm in the gallery, filled with young, predominantly brown-skinned people, with his claims that this is all a conspiracy organised by a racist police force. Not only does he believe they want to lock him up because he is a Polish Jew, but when he was arrested, witnesses thought he looked like an Arab and “some kind of mulatto”. No matter how much his lawyers tell him to shut up, Goldman can’t help but make a fuss. Even while in prison, he published an incendiary memoir (entitled “Obscure Memories of a Polish Jew Born in France”) that the prosecution constantly refers to.
Since most of the action takes place in a courtroom (with occasional cuts to Goldman strategizing with his lawyers in his cell), viewers will likely see “The Goldman Case” more as a play being presented in film format. But unlike, say, Aaron Sorkin, co-writer-director Cedric Kahn makes this a rawer, unadorned re-creation, based solely on the facts, with no big dramatic flourishes and even no music. It’s mostly traveling, documentary-style shots of lawyers on both sides (with occasional outbursts from Goldman) dissecting witness statements — whether they’re Goldman’s friends and loved ones or the people who claimed to have seen Goldman that bloody night — about what’s true and what’s not.
“The Goldman Affair” is a film in which many characters try to maintain their composure, and some fail miserably. Leading this struggle is Goldman, played with composure-testing vigor by Worthalter (recently awarded Best Actor at this year’s César Awards for his performance). From Kahn and Worthalter’s perspective, Goldman was petulant and self-destructive, so drunk on his anti-authoritarian image that he even rebelled against his lawyers. He often clashes with his lead attorney (Arthur Harari), who is a Polish Jew like him, but whom Goldman calls “an armchair Jew.”
Like most of the French courtroom dramas that have hit American shores in recent memory, “The Goldman Affair” is less about the resolution of the case and more about watching a guilty or innocent verdict play out in a court of law. According to this film, a French courtroom can become a hermetically sealed pressure cooker, especially when a high-profile case is being tried inside it. Nearly everyone in that room, from the jury to the spectators, can speak passionately when the moment comes. It almost seems like Kahn made this movie to show how boring our court cases (and courtroom dramas) are compared to what happens across the pond.