Year:  1996                 Release Date:  November 26, 1996

Written by Arthur Miller (Screenplay and Play)

Starring:  Daniel Day-Lewis, Winona Ryder, Joan Allen, Paul Scofield

This movie is a depiction of one of the earliest examples of American Jurisprudence.  It’s 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts and a bunch of children led by Winona Ryder’s Abigail Williams are conjuring love spells in the woods.  Assisted by Tituba, the Barbados slave, the children dance and strip and boil a chicken and a frog crying out who they want to be theirs.  Kind of like a twisted “Be Mine” chewable candy heart.  Except these girls turn the heart into poison as they accuse others of witchcraft to dispel punishment from themselves.

The Salem witch trials predate the United States Constitution by one-hundred years.  The movie depicts citizens being tried without lawyers, without evidence, without cross-examination, and without justice as we know it today.  Added into the mix are men of God who are trying to get rich by stealing land, a woman (Ryder) trying to steal a woman’s husband (Joan Allen as Goody Proctor and Daniel Day-Lewis as John Proctor).

Arthur Miller, the writer, is best known for being married to Marilyn Monroe.  He creates his greatest accomplishment in a play serving as a parable of the Congressional Communist witch-hunts in 1950’s America where who would not name names were incarcerated and tortured, and those who admitted their guilt were immediately freed.

Good movie.  I read the play years ago (in high school so many years ago) and the movie does it justice.  

Three and a half Gavels.