Kristi Jacobson’s legal documentary “No Accident” opens with footage of the “Unite the Right” rally in August 2017 in Charlottesville, Va.: White supremacists march with tiki torches and shout slurs such as “Jews will not replace us.” The grotesque gathering remains unsettling and infuriating to watch, but plunging us into the proceedings has a way of stating the ugly facts upfront.
Some participants in the two-day rally faced criminal charges, but Jacobson documents the steps in a civil case filed that October in an attempt to hold rally leaders responsible for conspiring to commit violence. Tracking the litigation led by the attorneys Roberta Kaplan and Karen Dunn, Jacobson’s civil rights procedural delves into both the legal work and the emotional strain involved in a case like this one.
Kaplan and Dunn’s team draws on damning excerpts from Discord, the social media site used by rally planners, and evasive, insulting depositions by conspirators such as Richard Spencer and Christopher Cantwell, who represented themselves in court. Jacobson shows the toll on some of the lawsuit’s nine plaintiffs, who recall the rally and the peaceful counterprotests on Aug. 12, when James Fields Jr. murdered Heather Heyer and injured dozens of others by driving his car into a crowd of protesters.
The movie, which feels constrained by the trial’s pandemic-related restrictions, maintains a civilized tone throughout. But it’s hard to keep calm at the spectacle of white nationalists preaching hatred and violence one moment, then attempting to squirm out of responsibility and court the jury’s sympathy. Jacobson’s account does the necessary work of restating the facts and showing that people can be held accountable for fomenting this kind of terror and harm.
No Accident
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. Watch on HBO platforms.