On Thursday’s opening night, Sundance threw a grenade into festival-goers’ carefully planned schedules. The following night, they announced, the festival would host the world premiere of Justice, Doug Liman’s documentary about Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
As with last year’s Navalny, who was thrown into the documentary competition 24 hours in advance, the sudden appearance of Justice lent the film a sense of urgency and mystery. What kind of explosive revelations could this film contain that would require it to be kept under wraps until the very last minute?
After standing in a crowded tent for an hour and making my way to the jam-packed screening, the answer I can answer is: not much. The general consensus is that Justice, at least in this 85-minute “Festival Cut,” is bomb-free. A call to the FBI tipline from Kavanaugh’s former Yale classmate, Max Stier, becomes a handheld recorder using a hidden camera and a digitally cloaked voice, replaying Stier’s testimony he overheard others at school talking about Kavanaugh’s sexual assault on his Classmate Deborah Ramirez, who claims Kavanaugh drunkenly stuck his penis in her face in front of several witnesses. (Kavanaugh has denied all allegations, and he and Stier declined to speak to the filmmakers.) But Stier’s tip and Ramirez’s allegations were widely reported in 2019, and simply hearing his actual call for the first time doesn’t come close to one same smoking gun.
On the other hand, is that the standard by which a documentary like this should be judged – a standard by which the vast majority of themed non-fiction films fail? Not even the directors of the film agreed. After the screening, Liman, the director of Bourne Identity, who made his documentary debut with Justice, which he also financed, admitted, “We live in a climate where it doesn’t matter what we put in this film” (Limans Father, Arthur Liman, was chief counsel for the Iran-Contra investigation when the future filmmaker was in his early 20s, so he’s no stranger to congressional investigations.) Those who believed Kavanaugh’s denial — or at least contemplated Ramirez’s claims of attack, Christine Blasey Ford and numerous others less important than his Supreme Court nomination – would not be swayed by the judiciary even in the unlikely event that they saw it, and those who believed him as prosecutors needed no further confirmation. “I kind of came up with the answer myself that maybe the truth counts,” Liman continued. “In a hundred years there will be this movie, and maybe that’s it.”
But Amy Herdy, the investigative journalist who led the film’s research team and has worked as a researcher on numerous sexual assault films, including The Hunting Ground, On the Record and Allen v. Farrow, immediately questioned Liman’s philosophical leanings. “Yeah, I’m not happy with that, with all due respect, Doug,” she said. “I hope this causes outrage. I hope this triggers action. I hope this will trigger additional investigations with real subpoena powers.” Part of the reason for the film’s short length was the decision to omit Kavanaugh accusers, whose allegations could not be corroborated, and because Ford appears at the edge of the frame in the opening shot, as Liman tries to convince her to be part of the film, obviously deciding not to go along with it. (Her indelible Senate testimony is included, of course.) But Herdy said that within half an hour of the film’s existence being announced to the world, new tips came pouring in via Justice’s website, and they may well become part of the finale Execution.
The best of movies, TV, books, music and more, delivered straight to your inbox.
You’re not imagining it: the manslaughter charges against Alec Baldwin are insane
HBO’s bright Scooby-Doo reboot achieves the impossible
The sneakily addictive reality show that’s taking the world by storm
How the cowboys imploded
The Justice Department is giving Ramirez, who in 2018 said she was ready to testify before Congress but was never subpoenaed, a chance to speak at length and psychological trauma experts to explain why her memory of the attack can be accurately described in some cases and vague in others. One of the film’s worst points is that Republican Attorney Rachel Mitchell, who pounced on minor errors and inconsistencies in Blasey Ford’s testimony to undermine her credibility as a witness, had worked enough sexual assault cases as a prosecutor to really understand , how traumatic she was to Memory Works and knowingly used that experience to attack Blasey Ford instead. (At one point, she asked Blasey Ford if she had actually had a conversation on the floor below the room where Kavanaugh allegedly groped her, or if she just knew people were talking.) And while Blasey Ford himself didn’t show up, several Her childhood friends, who also grew up with Kavanaugh, step up to the camera and clarify that Kavanaugh lied, at least under the oath of Congress, about the extent and excesses of his high school and college drunkenness — an act that by itself should be disqualifying for an application to the nation’s highest court.
Whether this matters depends in large part on where you set the bar. Based on this version of Justice, the film has little chance of convincing the FBI to reopen its investigation, let alone uncovering anything that could damage Kavanaugh’s place in court. But expecting a film to succeed where the entire Democratic Party apparatus has failed is an almost impossible goal. What it could do, particularly in an expanded and amplified version, is ensure Kavanaugh never escapes what Ramirez and Blasey Ford say he did, that every decision and public statement he makes is seen through the lens of the person for whom they hold him. That may not matter a hundred years from now, but it might matter now.