Sundance 2009: "William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe" Review - Written by Mathius Mack Gertz

William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe
USA, 2009, 85min., color
Genre: Documentary
Directors: Emily Kunstler, Sarah Kunstler
Executive Producer: Vanessa Wanger
Producers: Jesse Moss, Susan Korda
Cinematographer: Brett Wiley
Editor: Emily Kunstler
Music: Shahzad Ismaily


The title of the film comes from T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock. At the end of his life, many of Kunstler’s speeches were entreaties to young people to have the courage to take action for change. He frequently spoke about Michelangelo’s statue of David as embodying the moment when a person must choose to stand up or to fade into the crowd and lead an unexceptional life. He also recited parts of Eliot’s poem, where Prufrock wonders if he “dare disturb the universe.”

For liberals, radicals and reactionaries that consciously lived through America’s legal and social history of 1960 through the early 1990’s, William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe is a trip back. For those who were born or grew up after, it is an eye opening history of how we got to where we are today as well as how the current state of ‘court as theatre” came to be and the rational that justifies it. Through interviews and archival material, the life of Kustler as well as the legal and emotional battles he fought through much of his life is recounted. Hero or villain, you cannot help to be impressed with the man’s single minded idealism.

However, the film is also a psycho analytic exercise for the daughters, who are also the filmmakers, he had late in life with his second wife, Margaret Ratner, Using voice over, they reflect throughout about their own angst and confusion with their father’s choices and lifestyle. Thus the film devolves into a self indulgent exercise in public exorcising of personal childhood demons for two girls, who were only eighteen and sixteen when their father died over Labor Day weekend in September, 1994. A plot we are all too familiar with thanks to unreality-reality television and Jerry Springer.

As a history of William Kustler and the United States justice system, the story is riveting and well told. As a phycological exercise it is uncomfortable and distracting. Emily and Sarah would like to think we should care about their story for 85 minutes when in fact we only care about William. Theirs is only a minor subplot and should have been left as such. Marred as it is, William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe is still a worthwhile and well crafted history of American jurist prudence and should be seen. Three stars.