The Goldman trial by Cédric Kahn (Boredom, A better life) is a tense closed session around a feverish and eloquent main character, who engages in a fascinating verbal joust, like a boxer finding himself alone in the ring against French justice.
An intellectual and far-left activist who fought alongside revolutionaries in the Venezuelan maquis, Pierre Goldman was sentenced to life in prison in 1974 for four armed robberies in Paris, one of which resulted in the death of two people. He obtained a second trial, in 1976, due to doubts about the evidence presented at first instance.
Goldman proclaims his innocence in the murder case, in a book written in prison and acclaimed by the French left-wing intelligentsia (Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Régis Debray, etc.), which made him a literary star.
The half-brother of the singer Jean-Jacques Goldman, son of Jewish resistance fighters of Polish origin, admits to being the author of three robberies, but not the one on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, which cost the lives of two pharmacists.
Provocative, Goldman took advantage of the second trial at the Assize Court to denounce the French justice and police, whom he accused of anti-Semitism and systemic racism. He campaigns in particular for the rights of black people (his partner has West Indian origins). Is his virulent attack against the establishment part of a strategy to better pose as a victim and possibly exonerate himself of violent crimes?
Cédric Kahn makes the wise choice not to decide the question for the spectator, who he places in the position of the juror. His trial film, classic in its form, finds its originality precisely in the extreme sobriety of its staging. Almost the entire story takes place in court. There is no flashback and barely a few scenes where Pierre Goldman finds himself anywhere other than in the dock.
Presented at the opening of the Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival and the Cinémania festival, the film begins in the office of Georges Kiejman, a future star lawyer whose future as a formidable litigator can be guessed. In the role of this defense prosecutor that Pierre Goldman immediately disavows, the filmmaker of Black Diamond and co-writer ofAnatomy of a fall (from his partner Justine Triet), Arthur Harari, is very fair. But it is Arieh Wolthalter who commands almost all the attention as Goldman, a paradoxical and elusive being, thanks to a testimony of extraordinary intensity and sudden anger against all forms of authority.
Theatrical in its form, with lyrical flights which sometimes seem exaggerated, The Goldman trial does not claim to be a faithful reconstruction, but more a rereading of this legendary affair by Cédric Kahn, who did not have access to the transcripts of trial testimonies and gave free rein to his imagination in drawing inspiration for his screenplay (co-written with Nathalie Hertzberg) newspaper articles from the time.
The exercise does not lack interest, on the contrary, even if we can wonder what is true in this trial where everything seems exacerbated and excessive, French criminal justice basically offering a particularly fertile canvas in twists and turns and effects of toga. Whatever the case, Cédric Kahn draws a captivating portrait of the period, which finds a certain echo today, when anti-Semitism and systemic racism still plague French society.
His film, as its name suggests, only focuses on the trial of Pierre Goldman. The one who was notably the owner of a salsa club and a journalist at New Obs was assassinated three years later by far-right activists. He was 35 years old.
Historical drama
The Goldman trial
Cedric Kahn
With Arieh Worthalter, Arthur Harari, Stéphan Guérin-Tillié
1:55 a.m.
Indoors