This film was directed by Robert Redford, and concerns a woman named Mary Surratt who ran a boarding house where John Wilkes Booth and other conspirators met to plan the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, along with his Vice-President and Secretary of State. With Washington riven by Civil War tension, she was also arrested and charged with treason, despite their being no real evidence of her being involved in the plot.
While based in history, critics have suggested that the film serves as a modern-day allegory for the “torture first, ask questions later” mentality that led to civil rights abuses with detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The Conspirator screens tonight at the RPL Theatre at 7 p.m. Here’s the trailer.
