[Doug Liman’s “Justice,” a breathtaking documentary about
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s silenced sexual assault
accusers, goes a long way to proving the reality of the fears at the
heart of this particular case. Mainly, that there was such a desire at
several levels of government to see Kavanaugh on the bench that due
diligence wasn’t followed, and barely even attempted. A compelling
piece of journalism.]
[[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

‘JUSTICE’ REVIEW: BRETT KAVANAUGH DOC SHOULD COMPEL FBI TO REOPEN
INVESTIGATION  
[[link removed]]


 

Christian Blauvelt
March 21, 2023
IndieWire
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Doug Liman’s “Justice,” a breathtaking documentary about
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s silenced sexual assault
accusers, goes a long way to proving the reality of the fears at the
heart of this particular case. Mainly, that there was such a desire at
several levels of government to see Kavanaugh on the bench that due
diligence wasn’t followed, and barely even attempted. A compelling
piece of journalism. _

Brett Kavanaugh Confirmation Hearing, Esquire

 

That sinking feeling you get watching a great conspiracy thriller
usually boils down to this: all your worst fears are true.

Doug Liman [[link removed]]’s “Justice
[[link removed]],” a breathtaking documentary
about Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh
[[link removed]]’s silenced sexual
assault accusers, goes a long way to proving the reality of the fears
at the heart of this particular case. Mainly, that there was such a
desire at several levels of government to see Kavanaugh on the bench
that due diligence wasn’t followed, and barely even attempted. A
compelling piece of journalism, “Justice” is powered by the same
cinematic verve Liman showed in the conspiracy-minded “The Bourne
Identity” and “Fair Game.”

Tightly edited to a coiled 84 minutes, the film doesn’t offer quite
as many revelations as some might have hoped. But it pieces together
what already _was_ known into a compelling argument that calls into
question the entire process of Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Key to this
is the account of Debbie Ramirez, the Yale undergrad classmate of
Kavanaugh who told The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow in 2018 that he
shoved his penis in her face at a school party. Reading Farrow’s
account was one thing. Hearing Ramirez tell her story in her own words
is another, something riveting and heartbreaking as she searches for
the words, her eyes darting back and forth as she tries to recollect
as much detail as possible, to describe an encounter that’s taken
her decades to confront head-on.

Liman was assisted by journalist Amy Herdy, as well as documentarian
Liz Garbus and producer Dan Cogan. One of their smartest choices is to
involve, as talking heads in this very talking heads-powered doc,
psychiatrists and other cognitive experts to talk about the nature of
memory. And how just because some traumatic memories are suppressed,
or details surrounding the trauma are forgotten, doesn’t mean that
the core memory of the trauma is inaccurate. Christine Blasey Ford
doesn’t remember how she got home after the high school party where
Kavanaugh forced himself on her. That doesn’t mean her core memory
of his assault is inaccurate.

Combined with Ramirez’s account, the medical professionals’
perspective is one of the sharpest deconstructions of the eternal
“why didn’t she come forward sooner?” argument that bullies
victims into silence. And the way in which Blasey Ford and Ramirez
remember their assaults is entirely consistent with the way in which
victims usually do remember their traumas.

However, Liman has more up his sleeve than just explaining why
Kavanaugh’s accusers recall their assaults in the way that they did.
He produces another witness, who says on tape (as provided by a source
whose identity is deliberately obscured by the filmmakers) that he saw
Kavanaugh assaulting another, as-yet-unnamed freshman soccer player at
Yale in much the same manner as he exposed himself to Ramirez. That
witness is Max Stier, the CEO of Partnership for Public Service, and a
longtime politico, who ultimately declined to comment to Liman and
Herdy for the film.

All of this is about connecting the dots in the case and raising
awareness of something that was forgotten all too quickly in the
Republicans’ haste to get him confirmed. Sweeping the accusations
against Kavanaugh under the rug was very much the order of the day,
Liman makes clear, and he shows media footage from 2018 showing some
ordinary Republican voters saying that they thought what he was
accused of doing was nothing other than what “every
testosterone-fueled 17-year-old boy does.” In the rush to have
Kavanaugh become a Supreme Court Justice, there were then two
arguments: that the accusations against him were untrue, and that even
if they were true they didn’t matter, they were a long time ago, and
you shouldn’t care.

That second argument feels especially crucial. The most heartbreaking
part of Ramirez’s account is her talking about how she remembers her
friends laughing at her as Kavanaugh put his penis in her face —
their cold, mocking, shaming, hateful laughter. They were trying to
rob her of her dignity then, and denying dignity to some people is a
way in which some others gain power. Certainly that’s how high
school and college bullies find power. That’s how sexual assaulters,
and their enablers, can find power too. The enablers, sometimes
society writ large, contribute to the stripping of dignity via mocking
and shaming of the victims, then by calculated indifference and
forgetting about them altogether. Denying dignity also feels
especially like the m.o. of this current Supreme Court.

All of this in “Justice” is effective at getting us mad again, but
it doesn’t feel enough to threaten Kavanaugh’s place on the court.
The Senate is too close and the House is now in the hands of the
Republicans, and there’s zero chance he could ever be impeached and
removed. The one thing where “Justice” makes you think a new
investigation could happen is in the astounding way it reveals text
message exchanges from fellow Yale classmates that feel directed,
months before any of the accusatory accounts against Kavanaugh were
produced in his confirmation hearings or by Farrow’s New Yorker
article, at getting ahead of any potential accusers. They suggest that
Kavanaugh was worried Ramirez and more might try to resurface what he
knew he had done to them, was anticipating them airing their accounts
and was trying to get ahead of them to control the narrative himself.

If that’s the case, aside from a near-admission of culpability in
these cases, it raises the potential specter of conspiracy,
obstruction, and even witness tampering. That especially would merit
another look from the FBI, though “Justice” claims the Bureau gave
only the most perfunctory investigation the first time around (perhaps
because, as Herdy suggested in the post-screening Q&A at the
film’s Sundance [[link removed]] world
premiere, Yale classmates Kavanaugh and FBI director Christopher Wray
were friends dating back to that time).

The filmmakers clearly left a good bit on the cutting room floor: in
the post-screening Q&A, Herdy said she knows who paid all of
Kavanaugh’s debts (a source of some mystery and speculation) but
would not reveal it here, in part because it was irrelevant to the
main focus of the film. The result is a very swiftly paced film, and
one of the more effective talking head-driven docs in recent memory.
It would have done well to leave Lincoln Project co-founder and MSNBC
mainstay Rick Wilson out of the film, however — perhaps MSNBC will
be the natural home for “Justice” when all is said and done, but
that raises fears that “Justice” will only preach to the choir.

Does it matter that Kavanaugh was just a teenager when these things
happened? The American right insists that it does, with its “boys
will be boys”-adjacent refrain. One might also argue, especially in
light of Stier’s account, that the teenage Brett Kavanaugh accused
of forcing himself on a high school classmate and accused of exposing
himself to several at Yale was the _real_ Brett Kavanaugh, not yet
mediated and mitigated by his desire to conform to social conventions
and social climbing. Isn’t every high school bully on some level
still a high school bully even when they’ve grown up?

“Justice” probably won’t cause the FBI to relaunch an
investigation, though it should. It likely won’t move the needle of
public opinion. Those who support him and his appointment cannot be
swayed, the partisan lines are too dug in. The best thing that it
could hope to do is inspire others with knowledge of Kavanaugh’s
alleged misdeeds (or ones that we don’t even know about yet) to come
forward. In that case, all our worst fears being true wouldn’t be
the most shocking thing about the Supreme Court Justice. It’d be
that there are things we haven’t even thought to fear about him yet.

 

* Film
[[link removed]]
* Film Review
[[link removed]]
* documentary
[[link removed]]
* Brett Kavanaugh
[[link removed]]
* Doug Liman
[[link removed]]
* justice
[[link removed]]
* Sundance
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit portside.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 



########################################################################

[link removed]

To unsubscribe from the xxxxxx list, click the following link:
[link removed]