Panic room

The courtroom drama genre continues to fascinate moviegoers. Most films that perform well within the boundaries of this genre incorporate a buildup of anticipation, sometimes a twist in the assumed fate of the accused, but always a tightening of the tension in the room, like the claustrophobic feeling of four walls closing in around us, all to keep us munching our popcorn and brooding over the next piece of evidence waiting to be revealed.
 
Though some movies end with triumphant courtroom scenes for no reason other than cashing in on the great qualities of the genre (“Miracle On 34th Street” climaxes during a courtroom scene in which a judge must determine if the accused man is indeed the real Santa Claus), “12 Angry Men” is no such film.

Filmed in 1957, the movie was recently released in a “50th Anniversary Edition,” a piece of evidence clearly stating something that no lawyer could argue against: This film stands up to the test of time. This is due in part to how simple yet entertaining the film’s content is. Apart from a short opening sequence and an even shorter epilogue, the movie takes place entirely in a small New York City jury chamber on the hottest day of the year, as 12 jurors attempt to discuss the fate of a young man accused of the premeditated murder of his father.
 
When the first, preliminary vote is cast, the heroic Juror # 8 (Henry Fonda) stands alone with a vote of “Not Guilty.” From here, we begin to learn the details of the case secondhand, as the jurors debate them. By using this technique, the movie slowly collects the jigsaw-puzzle pieces of the murder case, leaving us begging to find out what whole picture we’ll be able to see once the puzzle is complete. The jurors debate and clarify these pieces of evidence so meticulously that we feel like we’ve seen the entire trial ourselves, when in fact, the movie begins just as the jurors are leaving the courtroom to deliberate on their verdict.

This movie is still entertaining viewers 50 years later for a more hidden reason as well: its technical aspects and their precise execution. For a film without tons of action, the technique heightens the psychological drama. Director Sidney Lumet (“Serpico,” “Dog Day Afternoon”) shoots the first third of the film with cameras that are mostly above eye level, using wide-to-medium shots of the characters. This view lets us dominate the room, giving the first part of the movie a free and open-spaced quality.
 
Toward the middle of the film, our view gradually drops to eye level and focuses in a little closer on the characters, putting us right down to their altitude. At the end of the movie, using barely noticeable transitions, the cameras drop to below eye level and use mostly close-ups of the characters’ faces. This low angle creates a sense of mass claustrophobia as we begin to see the ceiling above the jurors’ heads seemingly closing in on our view. Lumet’s shot selection twists the ropes of tension that are already wrapped around the room, and we find ourselves scooting even more to the edge of our seats.
 
But what’s great about this movie is that it is not concerned with solving the crime, as most whodunits are. It focuses instead on the profound thought of sending a young man to the electric chair. The movie is timely and highly appropriate in light of the past few years’ recent debates on the effectiveness and morality of the death penalty.
“This is a man’s life we’re talking about here,” Fonda’s character says. “We can’t decide in five minutes. Supposing we’re wrong?”

In the span of a terse 90 minutes, the characters and the tension they create are all thoroughly defined by their backgrounds, their clothes, their occupations, their relationships and their ways of looking at the case, whether emotionally, personally or logically. They smoke, they swear and they fight and yell, as they all gradually begin to realize that a man’s fate rests in each of their hands.
 
These 12 angry men are all people who we can somehow relate to — people we see in the bank or at the laundromat or even in ourselves when we look into the mirror — even though their case has been over for 50 years.