The Trial of Socrates

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this is the overview for an unfinished script I have been working on off and on for a few years

Overview of A Film

 
The Setting
The actual trial of Socrates took place in 399 B. C. in Athens in a HUGE hall lined by the towering colonnades of graceful marble pillars so characteristic of the Greek city-states of the time.  It is the time of the Parthenon, of the birth of the University and the Domecratic ideal.

The layout of the trial goes like this:  Socrates stands between the jury (comprised of an astounding 500 men) and the audience, also comprised of hundreds. Cinematically this is both challenging and exciting. Imagine lush, deep focus shots of the Socratic Apology with innumerable Athenians filling the image from the rear.

Who was Socrates
What did Socrates look like? A poor, earthy, old man dressed simply in a loincloth covered by an unadorned himation, a large piece of cloth wrapped in folds around his body. His appearance is far from handsome or noble. He is short and chubby, and spectators as well as his friends and students (Plato, Xenphon,  Aristophanes) remark that he waddles like a duck when he walks. His markedly subbed nose has wide, flaring nostrils, and his eyes, which he has an irritating habit of rolling, are set unusually far apart. These unattractive features combine with his unkempt beard and hair to give him an overall strange look indeed. At the time of his trial, Socrates was 70 years old.
 

 
The Case Against Him
The charges against Socrates were twofold:
1) Corrupting the young
2) Not worshiping the gods accepted by the city and the state

On the first charge, what is meant is that Socrates corrupted the youth through his teaching, rather that through the practice of pederasty (sex with boys) which did occur, but was an accepted practice in Ancient Greece. Most teachers would partake of sex with their young male students. This aspect of Athenian life will certainly be hinted at in the screenplay, but never handled overtly or directly as an issue by itself.
 

The second charge is simpler and more straightforward sounding, but really both of these charges can be likened to the Rodney King case in our time. An unjust verdict was reached, and all of our society demanded that something be done, so just as the cops in the present day were then tried on Federal charges of violating Kings civil rights, so to did the Athenian society as a whole rage against the Socratic rhetoric and the result was these two trumped up charges which, nevertheless, Socrates was indeed guilty of. Silly as they sound to Americans, they were the laws of their time and Socrates did break them.
 

Had Socrates merely tried his case as a straight ahead Freedom of Speech case, he most certainly with his silver tongue could have swayed the enlightened Athenians to his viewpoint and could surely have won acquittal. But one aspect of the Socratic rhetoric was stubbornness, and this, as we shall see, was probably Socrates' biggest flaw.

So why were the Athenians fed up with Socrates? The answer that lies in an understanding of the culture, the political climate, the history of war in Ancient Greece, and Socrates' life and affiliations throughout it.

 
The Basic Differences Between Socrates and His Fellow Athenians
To use another analogy from present day, Socrates would be analogous to the Mntana Freemen of recent history. He used to free speech to make a case against the social structure itself. By utilizing the basic rights and freedoms granted by his own society, he reckoned to reason against it.
Whatever good points Socrates had were largely lost on his fellow Athenians because of the extreme nature of his speech and past behaviors. They fdiffered on fundamental issues politically, religiously, and morally. It would be like living in Israel and denouncing Judaism, petitioning against Democracy, and attempting to convince young people to believe as you do. The Athenians saw no other course of action where Socrates was concerned.
  
three basic differences
1) The first and most fundamental difference was a disagreement about the nature of the human community. The Greeks saw it as a polis, or, a free city. Socrates said it was a herd. This viewpoint is expounded most famously by Plato, when at the beginning of his treatise on politics he writes that "man is a political animal."
 

2) The second difference regarded how the citizens should be goverened. While both sides agreed that the city should be governed by its citizens, they divided over how wide that citizenship should be. Socrates was more oligarchal, whereas the Athenians were more democratic. Thus, the Socratic view was that citizenship itself should be restricted to fewer and fewer, that the people should be reuled not by the many but by "the one who knows" (Xenophon, Memorabilia). To oppose sel government was to be not just antipolitical, but antidemocratic, and this is how Socrates appeared to the average Athenian.
               

3) The third difference spoke to the nature of that rule. Socrates' basic principle of government was laid out in the Memorabilia "that it is the business of the ruler to give orders and of the ruled to obey". Not the consent of the governed was required, but rather, their submission. This was, of course, an authoritarian principle most Greeks rejected. The Socratic premise was a basic inequality: nobody was a citizen, all were merely subjects, members of a "herd".
 
 

The Principal Accuser
There were three accusers of Socrates. Two of them, Meletus and Lycon, are obscure men about whome very little is actually known. The only prominent member of the Athenain society to accuse Socrates was Anytus. His presence at the trial, combined with Plato and Xenophon, would comprise whatever reaction shots are used during the actual Apology.
 
Who was Anytus? He was a general in the Peloponnesian War. He was a wealthy tanner who had played a leading role in the armed resistance which overthrew Critias and restored the democracy. In Plato's Apology, however, we never hear from Anytus at the trial. We hear only from Meletus, who comes off as dimwitted and proves a pushover for Socrates and his rhetoric. Nor is Critias mentioned in the Apology, which is surprising because Anytus and Critias are contrapuntal figures behind the trial.
 
We can only glean information about Anytus, however, through reading betrween Plato's lines, and from some information left behind by Aristotle in Constitutions of Athens. But being as how his character is really central to the realization of the trial, his character and manner will be embellished to give the screenplay balance and a sense of wholeness.
 
What we do know about him was that he was a leading moderate. A true democrat, and an opponent of any oligarchy of any kind, finding democracy much safer for the preservation of his own life and property, a very typical human motivation. He had a son who was tutored by Socrates, and the boy's tutelage was cancelled when Anytus feared that Socrates was turning the boy against his father, away from his father's business, and away from the democratic ideal.
 
Thus, Anytus had a clear personal, as well as, policitcal reason for bringing about the charges agains Socrates. He was not the only member of Athenian society aligned against Socrates, rather, he was the one who spoke up, providing the impetus for the ridding of the community from the threat that Socrates posed.
 
In the film, Socrates will have three major rifts with Anytus, one in the first act, two in the second act, which will escalate and read their apex with Anytus cutting off his son's tutelage with Socrates. This comes right at the tail end of the second act.
 

 
The Structure of the Film I Propose
We open with a slow pan over the remains of ancient Greece. We have a NARRATOR begin to recount the popular Socratic notion. The Narrator gives a brief history of Socrates and his life, as well as his famous pupils and all that as begin to INTERCUT with relevant paintings,  busts, statues and anything else we can get stills of.
 
We then CUT TO a slow pan, surveying the beauty of a garden so typical of ancient Grecian city-states. A SHIRTLESS BOY suns himself on a rock while earnestly listening to SOCRATES, who engages in one of his archetypal dialogues with the boy, all the while pacing back and forth, looking a little preoccupied.
 
Two guards enter. They have come to arrest Socrates. Socrates engages them as well, attempting to make them look silly to his student. Maybe he succeeds, but his manner at the moment of his arrest hill brought back against him later in court in a pivotal moment as the boy (he could be Plato, or Anytus' son) is forced to testify.
 
This brings us to the opening of the trial. As every issue is brought forth about Socrates, we flashback and see the history or his life, his ideas, and the beginning of his conflicts with his own society which indeed became his downfall. This structure comprises our first and second acts. The second act ends at the pronouncement of the jury, spoken by Anytus himself, that Socrates is guilty. The third act is composed only of the famous Socratic apology. The speech will probably last around 20 or 30 minutes.
 
The final scene is, of course, Socrates, surrounded by his friends, drinking the hemlock. He dies because he thinks he is right, he is sure of his intellectual and moral superiority to his Athenian brethren. Was he right? I hope to leave this point a little ambiguous, up to the viewer.
 
At the ending, I think it would be something if Socrates comes off a little like the narrator in Dostoyevsky's "Dream of a Ridiculous Man". He will be a little raving, rather confessional, but spiritually bankrupt and essentially morally and ideally somewhat dishonest with us, if not himself.
 
We reverse the pan from the beginning, and the NARRATOR comes begins to ask the questions hopefully raised by the film. Who was Socrates. Had his society done an injustice? How has history painted him, and is this rendition of him correct? How are you going to know (VERY Socratic idea here!)? Etc. We INTERCUT with film and stills from various contemporary issues which are analogous to or run parallel the trial of Socrates.. NARRATOR meditates on the legacy of the Greeks, the myth of Socrates, and the inherent injustice the first and greatest Democracy may have left for every future democracy to contend with.
 
The language of the film could go either way. I would feel more comfortable going with the classical feel, as close to the English translations of Plato, Aristphanes, and Xenophon as possible with an almost poetic, iambic pentameter feel to it. This would be a more challenging picture and ultimately, a more rewarding one. However, a modern language rendition could also be palatable, if handled correctly. The realistic setting, however, the marble of the ancient Greeks, that whole part of the set design should be kept intact. This seems very important.
 
 

The Approach of the Film
There is no doubt that the trial did take place and that Socrates did indeed exist. What is in doubt is the character of Socrates himself. I propose to view him freshly, perhaps more critically, making in fallible, and, in turn, more human. Socrates, especially as viewed by his admiring students Plato, Aristophanes, and later, by Plato's pupil, Aristotle) has historically been presented as the quick witted, always brilliant philosopher who championed freedom of speech and was sentenced to death because of it. Martyred like Christ, the notion of who Socrates was is usually presumed, not investigated.
 
I propose to paint a flawed, brilliant man whose with is well known, and whose intelligence is respected by all. He is a sort of town character, always chatting and debating. But it is his very lack of speech on certain issues, and his persistence at debasing the freedom that allowed him to be who he was, that brings him to his end. I propose to prevent a more challenging view than has previously been presented by the reverent scholars of antiquity.
 
This film would definitely not be a love song to Socrates, but rather an earnest, patient inquiry ( Socrates would most certainly approve of such an approach) into who Socrates most likely was. It will not be a basking of Socrates either. I don't seek to discredit the Socratic ideal, but maybe to color it a little bit differently.
 
I would like to go about this very ironically, using the Socratic method itself. We begin seeing Socrates one way, through the classical filter, and then, through the transpiring of selected milestones in  his life (and from the history of Athens, all well documented) show what he is not. These, like his confrontations with Anytus, will escalate in their significance, so that finally, we will have several things which we know Socrates is not. We will see that he is not  brave, does not serve his friends well, does not help his country in a time of war (all the while declaring that it is necessary) among several other things. As we have all these things that Socrates is not, perhaps the audience will begin to perceive what Socrates might indeed be.
 

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