After watching Jonathan Kaplan's "The Accused" a second time after 28 years, I was wondering: has the film aged badly or has justice improved tremendously?
The film concludes with disturbing statistics about one rape occurring in the United States every six minutes and one out of four being collective. I guess it's a blessing that we live in a time where the consentement of a woman isn't put into equation when she solicits justice after a rape, anyway not when a case is so horrendous as Sarah Tobias, a young woman who entered "The Mill" to chill out after a quarrel with her boyfriend and left it ravaged both externally and internally.
I suspect it didn't improve much, but the most difficult part of that subject is that like any crime that results in the confrontation of two parties: some attenuating circumstances are being sought if not the victim's responsibility in the form of apparent consentement. In Sarah's case, that she was drunk, wearing provocative clothes and looking like a low-class bimbo didn't facilitate her quest for justice and even the women who took photographs of her mutilated body didn't show much empathy.
That was 1988, and the story based on 1983 real-life incident, 30 years after and the #MeToo era having come through, rape has extended to situations of abuse of power due to professional status or age, which makes the areas of consentement grayer and rape of the chief causes of feminism. But "The Accused" is simply about justice.
Sarah, magnificently played by Jodie Foster, has been sexually assaulted on an pinball machine by three men in a bar, under the cheers and acclamations of other inebriated men making a pornographic live spectacle out of a crime, pure and simple. And the film's greatest accomplishment was to show the crime, it was accused of voyeurism or sexual exploitation but no, this is a film that reveals an ugly side of the human mind, and in such a truthful way watching it can only be helpful for us, to reconsider our thoughts in a more empathetic way toward victims, real or potential ones.
And having the victim a trailer trash type of girl not as articulate and educated as a student or a nurse, a smoker, drinker and a liberated girl might incline some loose minds to find excuses for the assaillant. "The Accused" is the antidote to such poisonous thoughts. When Assistant D. A. Kathryn Murphy (Kelly McGillis) make deals with the defense and replace the term 'rape' by 'reckless endangerment' to avoid the trial, preserve one of the accused's honor, and let them serve a mild sentence, it gives you an idea about how the legal system works.
But like the best trial films, a line is drawn between justice and legality. After the verdict, Sarah feels cheated by her defendant and finds herself harrased by one of the men who literally orchestrated the operation by taunting the second and the third rapist (creepily played by Leo Rossi), resurrecting Sarah's trauma but also allowing Kathryn to have her own epiphany. It's one thing to charge rapists, but what about those who encouraged them? As the film goes to its foregone climax, the real points stops to be Sarah's responsibility but the one of the other men who kept cheering, clapping and calling the turns.
As Kathryn points it out during the trial, as a moral as it is, one can't be convicted for witnessing a rape and turning his face away, but cheers might constitute a form of participation, hence accessory. That question sheds a new light on the previous sentences and Kathryn is put in the situation where her own career is at stakes, which is the narrative arc that accompanies Sarah's own: to be recognized as a victim of rape. It's not a matter of nobility but of principles and also a necessity to prevent such crimes to happen again.
The film is sober in tone and ordinary in its structure because the subject is so important it couldn't be distracted by "originality" or some twist, Kenneth Joice (Bernie Coulson) who's the boy who called the police and watched the whole thing isn't even a last-minute witness and is showed from the very start. However, the film showcases the extraordinary talent of Jodie Foster who won the Oscar, and it's probably deserved because it was perhaps the hardest role she ever had. McGillis deserve praises, as for the accused ones, that they felt sick during the shooting of the climax tells you how willing everyone was to show the reality of rape in its ugliest form.
And I remember watching the film at 11, I had to cover my eyes during the climax because it felt truly like an horror film, which it was. The most brutal part isn't just the gang rape but the sheer terror on Sarah's eyes, the way the camera shows her POV, and the cries and shouts around making "The Mill" a hell an absolute hell on earth for Sarah, putting into perspective Kenneth's dilemma to betray his best friend Bob (Steve Antin) by calling what he done by its name.
Writer Tom Toper deserves accolades for not turning the film into a battle-of-the-sexes thing, but a simple matter of justice for Sarah and redemption for those who didn't help her, whether Kenneth or even Kathryn who sold her for the first verdict. It also shows the role of peer pressure in such cases, especially through the last man who assaulted her because his virility was being ridiculed.
Within its normal look, "The Accused" might be the ultimate film about rape because it not only questions the causes without accusing the victim but it also raises collateral issues that can be extended to other crimes, and it's not afraid to show the whole thing, so if people can't stand watching it, maybe if they witness it someday, they will know the right thing to do.
