Essential Political Films: Juliet Warren on THE PELICAN BRIEF
THE PELICAN BRIEF, made almost 30 years ago and based on the John Grisham novel of the same name, is an interesting political thriller in that the central character is relatively far removed from politics. Our heroine, Tulane law student Darby Shaw, played beautifully by Julia Roberts is not a senator with ulterior motives, she’s not the First Lady who happened to stumble upon her husband’s secret, nor is she a staffer who overheard something nefarious through closed doors in the White House.
Darby Shaw happens to be representative of all the younger generation out there right now who have the intelligence and perceptiveness to understand situations seemingly beyond their area of expertise. She is your average young American with a strong sense of morality.
Driven partially by a love of her boyfriend and law professor, Thomas Callahan, and partially by an insatiable desire for understanding, Darby comes up with a theory as to why two environmentalist Supreme Court Judges were recently murdered. Callahan reads her brief, dubbed, The Pelican Brief, as it relates to a lawsuit filed by an environmentalist group protecting Pelican breeding grounds against drilling by a major oil and gas firm.
The Pelican Brief exposes corruption deep within the government in the form of campaign contributions paid by an oil tycoon named Mattiece to the sitting president. Mattiece, is attempting to influence the president’s decision on selecting two pro-oil and gas Supreme Court nominees to replace the recently deceased ones, believing this would sway the court decision on drilling in the Louisiana marshlands in his favor.
Callahan passes the brief off to a friend at the FBI. From there, it makes its way up into the highest echelons of our government. Along the way Darby Shaw is consistently dismissed as a “law student” and nothing more — before she is finally seen as a real threat.
This causes me to reflect on today as we are at a point when the younger generation, previously so casually dismissed, are starting to be taken more seriously. We are becoming a legitimate force to be reckoned with, and have a deeper perspective and moral compass than the older generation gives us credit for.
You need only look to the students of Parkland, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the founders of Indivisible to see that the younger generation has a sense of responsibility and duty to honesty, morality and the truth.
Another element about THE PELICAN BRIEF I find germane is the Washington Herald reporter, Gray Grantham, played by Denzel Washington. His part in this conspiracy is that of truth-seeker, a part that is incredible important in today’s political climate. With the degree of corruption and backdoor deals that seem almost commonplace in this administration, it is up to the news and reporters to keep the powers that be in check; to hold them accountable for their actions; to inform the public through deep and thorough reporting of the truth behind the masks. Something that essential in the fictional world and in our current reality.
