In anticipation of awards season, studios begin to usher in their respective prestige pictures, slowly dispersing them through the fall and winter seasons for the public to behold. The Judge is the first film of this year’s prestige lot. Its significance can be recognized by simply reading the cast and crew list: actors Robert Duvall, Robert Downey, Jr., Vera Farmiga, and Billy Bob Thornton, Spielberg’s renowned cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, and composer-elite Thomas Newman (i.e. titans of modern American cinema).
A film crafted by artists of this caliber conjures up visions of the vast, epic cinema of American filmmakers like Kazan, Ford, Spielberg, and Eastwood. But the sweeping shots of The Judge are not of massive, sacred WWII battlefields, nor of wind-swept, dusty Western terrain littered with the cowboys of old. Here the camera descends upon the quaint, georgic landscape of a small-town American community: an epic set in the backyard.
Each establishing shot is wide and lavish, portraying Carlinville as a rural Valhalla of Americana. The opening montage is a homage to To Kill A Mockingbird, dissolving through shots of family relics. The chariots of this familial epic are American-made cars: Cadillac and Ford. Catholic saints are evoked often, with even the film’s protagonists occasionally basked by the sun, flaring like an all-encompassing halo. Courthouses adorned with American flags loom over entire frames. Here dwell honor and history. The camera lens might as well be tinted red, white, and blue.
The film begins in Chicago but quickly shifts to the fictional Carlinville, Indiana where Hank Palmer (Robert Downey Jr.) is summoned home because his mother has passed away. Characterized by Downey Jr.’s ubiquitous rapid-fire linguistic dexterity, he is the typical hot-shot lawyer who brazenly defends the guilty to gain bigger paydays. In the middle of a divorce and rarely present at home, all he has left is his young daughter whom he hardly sees.
The first scene of Hank’s father, the titular judge (Robert Duvall), is in the Carlinville courtroom where he has served for over forty years. His name is Joseph Palmer, but he is referred to as “Judge” by everyone in town, even his family. He is a matter-of-fact, Midwestern man of the Silent Generation who believes that actions lead to consequences and in turn make a man and his legacy.
Well before “Judge” is accused of murdering a man the night of his wife’s funeral, the disdain between him and Hank is palpable. And when the case goes to trial and Hank becomes his father’s attorney, the vitriol and melodrama are set to full-blast. Courtroom scenes and those in between are a grinding stone for father and son to air out grievances. They are the gods of this world, ever-stumbling toward mercy and grace, fighting, yelling, and crying all the way.
The Judge attempts to observe masculine relationships, their codes of honor, and legacies. Judge and Hank are archetypal, American males, closed off from one another, growing more callous with each unsaid word. What happens when past hurts and personal visions of righteousness bring about disregard and contempt? Using these visions as barriers, how are honor and dignity destroyed? And what is the path back to restored relationship?
Ultimately, the film’s lens discolors its vision, stealing the honor of its own characters in exchange for a nostalgic adoration of sterile American ideals via big, loud melodrama. The American legacy is filled with epics, and the epic tale here ends up crushing its characters, usurping their journeys – nationalistic legacy reigning over man’s. Subplots are dropped, interesting characters (even the one played by the great Vera Farmiga) are marginalized, and relational dynamics and focused characterization are tossed away in favor of brash, loud drama. In the end, The Judge buckles under the weight of its prestige, becoming, as one character describes Hank, “a shined-up wooden nickel.”
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