Twelve Angry Men is my proudly favourite film. I watched it for the first time when I was around 12 and have watched it maybe five times since.
In Twelve Angry Men, the belief of one man holds great weight. Juror number eight prevents the jury from disbanding, and at the end of the film this power is given to juror number three, the last hold-out. Despite these decisive moments, the film is not about the power of an individual to fight against the many. Most of the runtime is dedicated to the process of consensus building, and to how our ideas are mediated by social pressures. The holes poked in the prosecution are done by myriad members. Juror number two notices the height difference between the man and his son, juror number five the knife angle, and juror number eight the woman's glasses. Only together can the jury notice what the defence has not, and these moments of discovery are teased out of individuals by conversation. The jury is able to coalesce into a group with a common goal - the pursuit of truth - when the responsibility of their decision becomes clear. At first, juror number eight is alone in taking the exceptional responsibility of voting to send a man to die. As the movie progresses, the importance of their verdict, literally manifested through the fate of the accused, and figuratively manifested through the ideals of democracy and a fair trial, weighs on all the men.
It's fun foreshadowing that I was so engrossed in a film about group decision making. Just as did Robert's Rules, the film set me up to be disappointed by the messiness, apathy, and lack of empathy displayed in real life deliberative assemblies. A jury is an exceptional setting. Group members are strangers, which eliminates complicated social relations. The issue at hand is specific, and no one has anything to gain or lose from the verdict. They are united in a single mission which is concrete and specific. Although personal biases will intrude on sound decision making, these biases are squashed by the reasonable majority.
I found the foreman more passive than I would've been as a presiding officer. In the foreman's defence, the lack of interference allows the men to hash out conflicts on their own, which they do eventually. When juror number ten spouts classist generalizations, juror number nine says, "what this man says is very dangerous". I agree - it's important not to indulge in stereotypes that can cloud the judgement of the jury, or entertain talking points that are intended to derail a conversation. But this film is optimistic. The group is not swayed by classism, and exerts social pressure on those who perpetuate prejudice. The foreman doesn't need to interfere, because the majority of members are reasonable, and the few exceptions are shamed into silence, even if they don't change their minds. The obvious instance of this happening is with juror number ten, who self-relegates himself to a time-out chair in the corner after all the others ignore him. This attitude doesn't censor the perpetrator, so they can't victimize themselves, but it refuses to engage in the rhetoric. Juror ten becomes agitated by the lack of response given that he thrives off conflict. After rambling on for a while, he becomes shamed by the words he is saying, or at least understands that others deem it unacceptable. I wonder whether it is truly possible to convert someone via this peaceful disapproval. The disapproval is especially powerful given that waring sides unite in a joint expression of denunciation.
While this group dynamic is inspiring, I think it represents more of an ideal than a reality. In my experience, members feel permitted to espouse increasingly biased and careless rhetoric when they hear others do it first. Factions are made from disagreements, and minority members make martyrs of each other. Value-based talking points throw off a conversation entirely. But maybe I am too impatient in my judgments of groups, and like the foreman, should trust that the conclusion arrived at will reflect that of a reasonable person. The idea of a jury is to trust that a measured and thought-out conclusion can be attained better with discussion and consensus than by individual judgement. It is an inherently optimistic idea.
Juror number seven is apathetic, which is a rare trait among the jurors. He's infuriating to watch. He changes his vote at the 5-7 mark to "break it up and go home". Juror number eleven confronts him with this and says that he should vote as he believes, even if that is to vote guilty. After some pressing, juror number seven says he is voting not guilty out of a genuine belief, but it's ambiguous whether the statement is true. I wonder if some jurors lied about their convictions. Juror number three, who held a personal bias against the accused, breaks down at the end of the film and changes his vote. But did he actually concede to all points made, and believe in them, or was he just emotionally spent? And the bigoted juror number ten, banished to a corner, was he perhaps coerced into siding with the majority? In-person debate mystifies truth even as it draws other truths out. Social pressures become a factor that prevents honesty. But this social pressure, the enemy at the beginning of the film, becomes necessary to achieve the solution the audience is rooting for.
Some argue that the jury came to the wrong conclusion in finding the accused not guilty. I don't believe that's the case, but what happened the night of the murder is never revealed. We're on the same level as the characters - we can never know what really happened. And so it's possible that an hour and a half of consideration lead to eleven previously correct men mistakenly swapping sides. I wonder how open-ended this is meant to be, and if the audience is meant to doubt the conclusion of the jury's deliberations. Given the inspirational speeches made about democracy, the consistent attempts at regaining peace after conflict, and the consequences of the verdict weighing more heavily on jurors as time passes, I believe this is a film about the successes of such decision-making, and so we are meant to trust in their verdict. But the emotional manipulation and unavoidable personal stakes can raise doubts of whether this form of deliberative assembly is a good conduit for truth seeking, or decision making.