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Rating: "A man is dead. Another man's life is at stake. If there exists a single doubt in your minds about the accused's guilt, then you must render a verdict of innocence. However, if such reasonable doubt does not exist, then you must in good conscience declare that the accused is guilty. Whatever your decision, the verdict must be unanimous".
A group of twelve men, twelve jurors in a parricide trial, retire to a sweltering courtroom to deliver the verdict. They cannot leave until unanimity is reached. The conviction of the young defendant seems certain, the reconstruction of the facts by the prosecution appears to have convinced all the jurors of the boy’s guilt. Yet, at the moment of voting, one of the twelve, number 8, insists on the boy's innocence.
The cinematic debut of Sidney Lumet (year 1957, based on a TV drama written by Reginald Rose), is all here. Black and white. Shot almost entirely in a single room. Few lines of plot. No special effects. No fancy camera pans. Just twelve men talking, confronting each other at the brink of physical conflict, to decide on the innocence of a boy.
The movie seems bound to end before it even begins; the verdict seems already written. The same juror number 8 (Henry Fonda, splendid in portraying a mild-mannered, measured character, yet tenacious in defending his position), candidly admits he voted for the boy’s innocence more out of scruple ("I thought it wasn’t easy to send a boy to his death without discussing it a bit first"), rather than being truly convinced of his innocence. The room where the twelve are confined is stuffy, suffocating, the much-anticipated baseball game is imminent, and above all, the boy is a poor soul from a rundown neighborhood, with a criminal record that would make Barabbas blush, already a victim of violence and beatings from his father: of course, he wanted revenge! What's the need to discuss? He’s just a criminal who killed another criminal.
In this context, the calm and unbiased reflection, the meticulous analysis of the facts of the case first by number 8 alone and then by other members of the jury, ends up pouring gasoline on the fire: the disputes and divergences become ever more fierce, more heated, amidst the smoke of cigarettes nervously consumed and loosened neckties. Little by little, piece by piece, the entire story is rewritten, the drama of doubt seeps into the minds even of the most unwavering jurors. Guilty or innocent, good or bad, they find themselves pitted against each other armed only with their intellect and their powers of persuasion, in a sort of ensemble western in suits and ties, fought with the weapons of dialectic, under the lights of a courtroom.
We will never even know the names of the jurors, numbers are enough to distinguish them, yet we learn to know them, to intuit each one's history, from the first shots: some by a gesture (a piece of paper carelessly thrown out the window), some by their dress (a jacket stubbornly kept on despite the heat), some by a phrase that alone is as good as a condemnation ("…what rights!.. these young criminals should be dealt with before they cause trouble. It would save time and money"). And so, around that table, in that room with the broken air conditioning, little by little the debate transcends the procedural dimension to become a social, cultural, generational clash: it's no longer just about deciding the innocence or guilt of one man, but about a struggle for the assertion of one's modus operandi, one's lifestyle, the social stereotype one wants to champion.
Lumet reveals himself as a fine investigator of the somatization of doubt: first, he seems to want to chase down the jurors, pursuing them one by one with sophisticated long takes, seeking out the weakest, the one in whom the seed of doubt might most easily take root. Then he corners them, knowing they cannot escape physically and will have to account for every word (even if it slips out in a fit of rage), for every uncertain glance: their faces are put to the test by the camera, interrogated and scrutinized by merciless and revealing close-ups. The sweat slowly beading on their faces and foreheads soon is not just from a sunlit summer day, but above all from the palpable tension, the conflict, a situation stuck in inextricable stasis. As the filming progresses, Lumet chooses to use lenses with a longer focal length. In this way, the figures elongate, the ceiling and walls of the room imperceptibly close in on the jurors' faces. Simply put, as time goes by, the room seems to shrink, tighten, pressing down on the protagonists.
What this "squeezing out of humanity" brings to light are especially the mediocrities and pettiness of the human soul. Prejudice is the most widespread and deep-rooted feeling among the jurors, the inability even to hypothesize the innocence of "a boy like that". For some of the jurors, the guilty verdict ends up taking on the flavor of revenge, a personal vendetta for wrongs and defeats suffered: better to deny the evident weaknesses of the prosecution’s case than to admit defeat. Better to stifle the cries of one's own conscience at the outset than to listen to the truths we carry within. All will have to accept revealing those weaknesses and personal dramas from which they cannot free nor, much less, avenge themselves by sending an innocent to die, even the arrogant juror number 3, played by the extraordinary Lee J. Cobb (his final monologue is moving).
As if, with the coming of the storm that washes away the sultriness, the real convicts end up being the most vehement accusers.
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