Mark Reviews Movies: THE FIGHT (2020)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 30, 2020

The American Civil Liberties Union has been busy as of late—and with good reason. A battle for civil rights and freedom becomes more difficult when a wannabe authoritarian, backed by a political party willing to undermine its own values and the core values of a nation in order to maintain power, becomes the most powerful person in the country. That's what has been happening in the United States since a mere seven days after the inauguration of the sitting President, and The Fight follows five attorneys with the ACLU as they push back against the federal government's attempts to limit the rights of certain groups of people.

It's effective, too, as a sort of fly-on-the-wall look at an organization that has been stretched thin by the actual or attempted abuses of power being performed, seemingly daily, by this administration and its champions. To watch this is to be reminded of old fights, seemingly settled but constantly raised again, and forgotten ones, which made headlines and news broadcasts at the time but have been overshadowed by the onslaught of new ones.

To list them all would take too much time, so the filmmakers—Elyse Steinberg, Josh Kriegman, and Eli Despres—focus on four sections of the ACLU's work: reproductive rights, LGBT rights, immigrant rights, and the census. There are constant judicial filings, hearings, and court appearances, as the five lawyers have started working weekends just to keep up with the multiple cases, all proceeding and evolving at the same time. Lee Gelernt, who tries to stop the administration from a blanket ban on immigration from primarily Muslim countries and then has to make the seemingly obvious case that parents shouldn't be separated from their children, is at the office on one Saturday, which happens to be his son's birthday.

All of these battles matter on a level that's fundamental to the promise of this country. That's the perspective of the participants and the filmmakers. Does the documentary take a side? Yes, it most certainly does, in that it takes the stance that all people who are in the United States—regardless of their religious beliefs, their sexual orientation, their gender identity, their race, their citizenship status—are inherently deserving of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution, either explicitly or as determined by the Constitutionally granted process of judicial review.

If the real meaning of that question is whether or not the film takes a position in favor of one political party over the other, there's a better question, then, to be asked: Why is there a divide on such issues between the parties in the first place? If you come away from this documentary thinking that it's attacking your party affiliation or your personal political beliefs, it might be time to re-think both.

To be fair, such statements are far stronger than anything in the documentary, which simply watches as Gelernt, Brigitte Amiri, Dale Ho, Chase Strangio, and Joshua Block do their work. It's stressful, difficult, and challenging work but necessary, too. Those are the main takeaways of the film—that these people are up to this challenge, because they genuinely care and believe in the promise of equal treatment under the law in this country.

Amiri goes to court over an anonymous immigrant's woman's decision to terminate a pregnancy—a medical procedure that is being denied to her by the government agency currently detaining her. In court, the lawyer has a run-in with a certain judge, whose love of beer and questionable party behavior will become a contentious issue in the near the future.

Strangio and Block are tasked with challenging the President's random, late-night declaration that transgender individuals will no longer be allowed to serve in the military—a statement that comes as a shock to even people at the Pentagon. Strangio, who is transgender, takes it personally, obviously, which, for the team, means that the argument of the case must go Block. The attorney struggles with the notion of representing stories with which he has no personal experience and the pressure of having the rights of an entire group of people on his shoulders.

Gelernt's cases have been explained already, but there's a constant sense of frustration in his side of the story. Policy keeps changing. The government's legal arguments for a travel ban and immigrant detention keeps adapting to meet the challenges being put forth by the ACLU. In one scene, Gelernt is preparing to appear on TV to discuss one case, only to have a ruling be announced in another within minutes of the broadcast cutting over to him.

Ho is handling a case regarding the inclusion of a citizenship question on the upcoming census. It leads to his first appearance in front of the Supreme Court, as well as a montage of all these lawyers entering courthouses across the country for their own legal arguments to be made.

The filmmakers aren't celebrating these subjects in any overt way, because the reason to celebrate them is how devoted they are to their work and the values of this country. They don't praise the ACLU, either, especially during one sequence, as the organization supports the rights of multiple far-right groups—specifically, white supremacists—to gather in Charlottesville, Virginia. That two-day rally, of course, resulted in one of the group murdering a young woman, by driving into a group of counter-protestors. There's a clear divide within the organization about whether or not they made the correct decision.

Such discussions are necessary. The answers to some, like the work we see here, are self-evident. The Fight, rightly, treats them as such.

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