The Goldman Case directed by Cédric Kahn grippingly reconstructs the 1976 trial of voluble and charismatic leftist Pierre Goldman and tackles antisemitism and history.
Just Because You're Paranoid Doesn't Mean They Aren't After You
by Alexa DalbyThe Goldman Case
[rating=4]
CAUTION: Here be spoilers
The film starts with a clever opening scene between two of Goldman’s lawyers. It’s full of movement, contrasting with the mainly static courtroom to come: the younger lawyer reads out to the senior lawyer a letter he received from Goldman (award-winning performance by Arieh Worthalter), which gives an indication of his difficult personality and that of his patient and long-suffering advocate Georges Kiejman (Arthur Harari, who co-wrote Palme d’or winner Anatomy of a Fall and has a disturbing resemblance to Freddie Mercury). Like his volatile client, Kiejman is of Polish-Jewish background – important in the context of people’s psychic wounds, still fresh from World War II. Stéphan Guérin-Tillié is the court president, the presiding judge, who questions Goldman in what would be an examination in chief by barristers in an English courtroom and dominates the uproar of Goldman’s supporters in the unruly courtroom, whereas an English judge would have simply cleared the court.
Like Saint Omer, Anatomy of a Fall, The Trial of the Chicago 7, The Goldman Case is a gripping courtroom drama which highlights the difference between a French courtroom, where it seems anyone can speak and an English courtroom – their contrasting natures, inquisitorial vs adversarial – at a pivotal moment for ‘traditional’ revolutionary-left movements.
The web of evidence of the witnesses is sometimes contradictory but that’s not the point. The point is Goldman, the man himself – a violent man, an uncompromising intellectual, far-left revolutionary who trained in South America, for whom his Jewishness is over-ridingly important but who also identifies as oppressed with Black (Caribbean) people, who sees anti-semitic bias inherent in everything (witnesses, his arrest, endemic police corruption, his framing), and who may be right.
Although he is happy to take the blame for numerous armed robberies, he wants to be found innocent of two murders in them because he is innocent, rather than on the basis of character witnesses. At the end, we see what became of him.
The Goldman Case is an absorbing, well-acted and unfortunately still relevant examination of historical bias, painstakingly put together from reports and transcripts. The riveting Goldman mystery continues to this day.
The Goldman Case premiered at Cannes, screened at the BFI London Film Festival and is released on 20 September 2024 in the UK and Ireland.
