The case depicted herein was before my time. I wasn't even sure at first that the movie was based on a true story. Fortunately, I've since found no indication that it plays fast and loose with the truth, apart from one unimportant detail and one obvious factor I'll go into in a bit.
It starts in 1982, with former oil company consultant Claus von Bülow (Jeremy Irons in his Oscar-winning role) getting convicted of attempting to murder aristocratic wife Sunny (Glenn Close) with insulin shots that left her persistently comatose. Claus hires lawyer and law school professor Alan Dershowitz (Ron Silver) to represent him for an appeal. Alan persuades his students to aid in research. Neither he nor they really think Claus innocent, but Alan (1) understands the value of defense in the justice system and (2) could use the pay for a different case he's on the verge losing. That said, he knows it's an uphill battle; only the complete destruction of the prosecution's case, not a mere technicality, will allow victory.
I'll just get this out of the way now: Alan's other defendants, who are never shown or named on screen, are based on the Tison brothers but said to be Black. I can only guess that the race shift meant to increase viewer sympathy, but it seems gratuitous.
Far more awkward to my mind is the framing device of narration...by Sunny. Now, I could easily accept dead first-person narrators in Sunset Boulevard and American Beauty, but are we to believe that the soul departs when the body is merely vegetative? (The real Sunny still was until 2008.) Plus, we hear her only at the beginning, the end, and a brief part of the middle, so it doesn't add much. She even declines to tell the audience whether Claus did the deed, saying, "When you get where I am, you will know the rest." What kind of sense does that make? On the plus side, the rarity made the problem easy to ignore most of the time.
A more common device, naturally, is the flashback. Prepare for a lot of jumping around in time, albeit generally to late in the von Bülows' marriage. Only a handful of flashbacks are putative or of questioned authenticity.
You may have to shed your present associations with the name "Alan Dershowitz," which has been relevant even this year. At the time, he had had only one previous high-profile client, Harry Reems of Deep Throat, so nobody treated him like a celebrity or a villain. Here he comes across as a pretty regular guy, if a little prone to not dealing with stress well.
Claus, meanwhile, seems far from regular. His stiff, dry demeanor makes it hard to tell how serious or humorous he means to be. He openly cheated on Sunny while she was awake and still sees his paramour. His stepchildren distrust him. I doubt if anyone, even among those who come to believe in his innocence, would care to befriend him. One may suspect that his prior conviction stemmed in part from the jury getting rubbed the wrong way.
Nevertheless, going by the evidence uncovered by the legal team, I would have voted to acquit. I won't sum it all up, but Sunny's history of drug overuse certainly hints at the possibility of a self-administered OD. And personally, I don't get the impression she's a much better person than Claus, not least when she gets angry at him for wanting a job despite their riches.
I hesitate to call this a courtroom drama, because I doubt we see more than three minutes in a courtroom all told. The vast majority of the non-flashback action consists of conversations and digging. If that doesn't sound engaging enough -- maybe even low-stakes, considering you probably wouldn't be heartbroken if Claus lost -- know that Alan eventually faces a credible threat to his career. But that arc doesn't last long either.
The plot was hardly tailor-made for Hollywood, but overall, I think it works rather nicely. It serves as an important reminder if not a mental exercise regarding the sticky nuances of reality. And again, it's apparently faithful to that reality.
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