In the movie “12 Angry Men”, a 1957 black & white classic courtroom drama, the director Sidney Lumen not only gives an insight into the human susceptibility to the opinions of others and disposition to become biased due to personal prejudice but also gives a testimony to what determines a true leader. The movie tells a story of a jury composed of twelve members, who deliberate the guilt or acquittal of an 18-year old boy accused of stabbing his father to death. The stake is very high, as according to the law once the captive is pronounced guilty in an unanimous verdict, death sentence is mandatory.Human emotion and dialogue play a key factor in the movie. Almost every scene is set within the jury room and the adjoining bathroom.
It amplifies the power of the dialogues and sets the focus on the continuously shifting relationships between the characters. The position of the camera changes throughout the movie. In the early scenes, it is usually pointed above eye-level, using wide-angle lenses, which provides the viewer with an invasive overview of the situation. As the discussion becomes fiercer, the director resorts to using higher focal length, which builds up the tension and gives the viewer a deeper insight into the emotional states of the characters. Furthermore, the authors have deliberately resigned from the use of music, except for short sequences at the beginning and towards the end of the movie. The atmosphere is built upon the ambient noise interrupted by conversations, abrupt monologues and shouts.
Characterisation plays a significant role in the movie. However, a remarkable feature is that we don not learn the names of the jury. The jurors are assigned numbers, and with the exception of two, who introduce themselves to each other at the very end of the movie, they remain anonymous to us. All jury members have different professional and social backgrounds and distinctive personalities.
Some are well educated; some are referred to as being raised up in slums. Some lack the courage to present their point of view with confidence, some are arrogantly extroverted. Nonetheless, a common characteristic for all of the jury members, except one, is that they are easily opinionated and biased. All seem to be pre-concerned about their own well-being. One of the jury members - a salesman, explicitly states that he has a baseball game to watch in a couple of hours.
Another - an owner of a messenger service, introduces himself and confesses at the very beginning about the pity he feels towards his son. It occurs to the viewer that the jury values its personal time higher than the boy’s life.The traditional role of a foreman has been assigned to the 1st juror, a high-school assistant head coach. At first he is persistently concerned to keep his authority and the proceedings formal. Introducing the rules for the meeting, his voice remains hesitant.
As the doubt arises and the discussion becomes more heated, he eventually backs out. “What do you want me to do with it?” - he asks, once everyone grows impatient with the situation. He leans out for suggestions and it looking for ways to get the pressure off his shoulders.Very early the proceedings the formal position to authority makes a shift towards the true leadership, exhibited by jury member 8, an architect. Unlike majority of the jury members he was not easily swayed and objected to pronouncing the boy guilty in the first vote.
As he believed that any decision should be given time, he insisted that the jury talks things through for another time and re-consider all the evidence before reaching a conclusion. Even though the other jury members seemed to be against it, he had the courage to resist the pressure from others and defend his standpoint. He is able to emphasise and put himself into the kid’s shoes, at the same time admitting to his own uncertainty. Then, he has enough charisma to make the other jurors re-consider and reach the conclusions on their own.
Sometimes, he resorts to using the expertise of others to support his argument - the story of the juror 8, who understood the motivations of the key witness - the older man living in the same building where the murder took place helped him to win an argument. In this way he was able to build a powerful alliances - first with the elderly juror sitting next to him (towards the end of the movie we learn his name was McCredie) and later with others. When he discerns that doubt arises on the face of one of his fellow colleagues, he would ask them a direct question in order to convince them to re-consider their judgment.The architect is skilful in making ‘deals’ as a bargaining tool. As feels he already could have won supporters, he is brave enough to propose a secret ballot in which he would abstain from voting.
He takes a calculated strategic risk, and as the vote does not pass, other members are committed to further discussion.At a certain point as the discussion becomes very heated and more and more fallacious arguments are being used, chaos and aggression break out. At this point the juror 8 (the leader) is able to stay calm, focused and think clearly. Furthermore, he is able to manage the tension through summarising the situation in an unbiased and unambiguous way.For me, the key lesson from “12 Angry Man” is that the titles and social position are not the source of leadership.
In the movie, the jobs held by the jury members are revealed only as the movie progresses. The profession the juror 8, an architect, is revealed in very coincidental circumstances - during a casual conversation held by him and the salesman (juror 7) and is far from a stereotypical professional background of a leader. A second reflection is that leadership is about taking responsibility for a case and defending our standpoint with confidence, even if everyone around opposes to it. Lastly, a very important ability for a leader is to be able to trust his intuition. After all, it was a gut feeling that inspired the architect to help the jury to reach a different verdict.
