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clear reasoning - religion - seing the light of God - transcendental experience that brings you closer to God, but also to Truth, Justice and Fairness.

Truth is also seen as a divine experience.

The light switches on only after a while , after the storm, as the debate gradually evolves in a domino-styled effect. So the light is on at the end of the movie, not at the beginning, infusing the whole last scene from the movie, reflected by the rain.

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Clearly the justice system is seen as unefficient or only partially efficient as the jurors need to rework the whole trial and counter examine all the evidence for themselves. The entire responsibility should not be on the shoulders of 12 men solely, who furthermore have no qualification, just their willingness to fulfill their duty - or not.

There's also a critique of society as it fosters inequalities and criminality.

Also emerges a critique of the ideals of masculinity, which can be toxic as shown by the outcome of Juror's 3 education to his son - a broken relationship torn apart by violence and anger and domination ( "he laid me down"). Even more so as the qualities of juror 8 and juror 9, their patience, their sense of observation, their ability to put themselves into other's shoes, no matter their gender, clearly do not pertain to this masculine stereotype. The jury is also strictly masculine at a time when women were seeking more representation in the american society and the American justice system.

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If clearly the judge attitude and the nonworking fan  in the jury-room could ironically refer to flaws in the American judiciary system, there is also irony in the debunking of the " I'm gonna kill you" argument and an even more subtle level in the final twist of the eye-glasses.

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Another word for eye-glasses in English is " spectacles" and funnily enough juror 4 is without his spectacles when Juror 10 presents him with this new evidence. Subtle but enough to give us food for thought about the illusion of truth effect... It may also be a meta-reflexion on the movie itself.
"All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances;", W. Shakespeare, As you like it.
We should also not forget the irony in the dialogues involving the racist juror 10 - Juror #10: Bright? He's a common ignorant slob. He don't even speak good English.
Juror #11: [who has a foreign accent] He *doesn't* speak good English.

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12 Angry Men is an excellent example of a film that has multiple twists.
Twists are prevalent in every courtroom drama. There has to be something to keep the audience on their toes. It needs to throw everything— the entire court— into a state of disbelief.

It’s the gasp moment.

These twists allow opinions to form and alter.
The first comes when Juror 8 shows that he owns the same switchblade as the accused, casting doubt regarding the uniqueness of the weapon.
The final twist is when Juror 9 realizes that the key witness would have had to put on her glasses in order to see the crime take place.

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" When a man feels he has come to the end of his rope, it is perfectly natural that he should want to scream." Paul AUSTER Moon Palace.
Emotions are king in the courtroom drama. People are being pushed to their limits in search of objective truth. Inevitably, somebody will hit their breaking point, letting loose with a vicious tirade expressing their contempt for the case or those that oppose them.

The moment professionalism and control fly out the window, emotion takes over. Juror 3 and Juror 10 exemplify this feature of courtroom dramas. One out of personal failure he has been trying hard to suppress, the other one out of ignorance and bigoted prejudices an races. “I don’t understand you people!”

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12 Angry Men - 1957 - Speech of Prejudice scene

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empathy, first and foremost ;

moral courage ( speaking up -see M.L. KING's quote),

patience

making room for a possible evolution

making room for the others to speak their minds

emotion management

but expression of emotion nevertheless ( suppressed emotions are harmful)

critical thinking ;

argumentation and looking closely and coherently and consistently at facts

The willingness to reconsider your positions/opinion to become aware of biases and prejudices

making room for other people's point of view.

JUROR #8: " Look, this boy’s been kicked around all his life. You know - living in a slum, his mother dead since he was nine. He spent a year and a half in an orphanage while his father served a jail term for forgery. That’s not a very good head start. He had a pretty terrible sixteen years. I think maybe we owe him a few words. That’s all.”

JUROR#9: " Gentlemen, that's a very sad thing to be nothing."

We : who ? Jurors, seeking justice ? Citizens in a society that fosters inequalities ? Human beings ?

Dehumanization implied by the system ? A victim still is a human with a personal story that's worth of consideration.

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To come to an unanimous verdict, they have to achieve unity, to make 1, to be of ONE MIND. So this movie is also about creating community by overcoming their differences of points of view on the case , overcoming their diversity in ages, origins, working and social  categories, their divergent worldviews and personal experiences. They need to cooperate and to create a real group dynamics.

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rational arguments the switch blades, the glasses

arguments not based on facts, prejudices

go very deep into details, to check the veracity of facts

evidence unreliable

based on flimsy testimony

a praise of doubt

everyone is making their point, and give their opinion without knowing the real truth ignoring small details

they don't know if the kid is guilty or not. Everyone except one thinks the kid is guilty. But at the end of the deliberation, they are supposing all the arguments are wrong.

There is no legit and real arguments, just thoughts and feelings leading to presumptions. They are convinced by the court evidence and they are only focusing on it.

Only juror 8 tries to understand the story from an other perspective.

Curiosity, empathy, reasoning, made them change their mindset by creating room for doubts,

The jurors encounter many difficulties in learning to communicate and deal with each other. What seems to be a decisive guilty verdict as deliberations begin, slowly becomes a questionable “not sure”.

Juror 8 levels with the others by openly admitting that he does not know if the boy killed his father and solicits feedback in order to make an accurate decision.

He says “I just don’t think we should send a boy off to die without at least talking about it first.”  The example he sets encourages the others to level and be open to receive feedback. The movie illustrates the process of leveling and soliciting feedback which can make all the difference.

-> tries to put himself in the boy’s shoes to gain a better understanding of his situation.

Through open conflicts they will also resolve a lot ( see -conflicts about time or words) because conflicts expose and help gain awareness.

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several types of conflicts in the movie:

opinion conflicts :

guilty or not guilty - in conflict with one another

arguing leads to conflict

father and son conflicts

internal conflicts -

juror 3 is in conflict with himself because he was raised in a toxic masculinity which has lead into a conflict with his son. When he told the other jurors about his son it had been two years since they saw each other. It leads juror 3 to feel pain and sadness which conducts to anger issues and the will to disagree with everyone else

juror 1 may be experiencing an internal conflict too as he makes room for everybody else to speak their minds but not for himself

juror 12 about making decision.

moral conflict

duty vs personal story

conflicts between society and diversity : jurors all white , all male, a defendant coming from the slum, an old man as a witness whose desire is to be heard, and listened to, and probably just noticed, and middle-aged woman as another witness who wants to be seen, heard and who struggles with her body image and society's expectations to such a point that she'll take off her glasses and pretend she does not wear these.

in the film prejudices are used as facts ( like the people who are living in ghettos are all liars ) but as soon as the juror 5 tells the others that he was born in a ghetto, the juror 3 say "  you are a nice fella, you are not like the others " but his thoughts about these people are still as biased as in the beginning, because he doesn't want his prejudices to be changed.

conflict with words -

juror 10 & 3 : phony story, fairy tale, mumbo jumbo, wild stories...

the " I'm gonna kill him! I'm gonna kill him!" " You don't really mean you'll kill me, do you ?" Earlier in the film juror 3 said that these kind of sentences were rare and nobody used them without meaning it.

conflict with the notion of time-

During the time of deliberation mindsets about time vary a lot.At the beginning they all want to be quick and get out of the jury room apart from juror 8. What's an hour long conversation when a man's life's at stake ? Juror 3 even resent spending so long in the courtroom

“JUROR #7: Supposin’ we take five minutes? So what? Let’s take an hour. The ball game doesn’t start till eight o’clock."

“JUROR #8: This is somebody’s life. We can’t decide in five minutes.”

Time is also at the core of the argumentation:

Juror #8: [answering Juror #4's remark about where the father's body was found] We're not, unless somebody else wants to; but *I'd* like to find out if an old man who drags one foot when he walks, 'cause he had a stroke last year, could get from his bedroom to his front door in 15 seconds.

Juror #3: He said 20 seconds.

Juror #8: [looks at him] He said fifteen!

Juror #3: He said twenty seconds! What are you tryin' to distort...

Juror #11: He said fifteen.

Juror #3: [pause, then shouts] How does he know how long fifteen seconds is? You can't judge a thing like that!

Juror #9: He said fifteen seconds. He was very positive about it!

Juror #3: He was an old man! Half the time he was confused! How could he be positive about anything?

[stops, realizing what he's just admitted]

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Is the movie about the art of debating or about the art of listening ?

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Is the movie about the art of debating or about the art of listening ?

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This movie is both about the importance of speaking up and the importance of listening and hearing from the other team members, no matter your personal level of disagreement. “ I just want to talk about it”. But in fact juror 8 does much more than that.

He establishes a sincere and safe space to build up a collective rationalization of the case, helping each member of the group to overcome self-censorship, or even to let go of all their suppressed emotions  altering their judgment.  Everyone can be heard as an individual with his own views which will thus debunk the illusion of quasi-unanimity from the start.

"It's always difficult to keep personal prejudice out of a thing like this. And wherever you run into it, prejudice always obscures the truth. I don't really know what the truth is. I don't suppose anybody will ever really know. Nine of us now seem to feel that the defendant is innocent, but we're just gambling on probabilities - we may be wrong. We may be trying to let a guilty man go free, I don't know. Nobody really can. But we have a reasonable doubt, and that's something that's very valuable in our system. No jury can declare a man guilty unless it's SURE. We nine can't understand how you three are still so sure. Maybe you can tell us."

He is an architect here too because he supervises the construction of cooperation but also brings relief.

In fact the whole plot revolves around the DOMINO EFFECT of sincere and respectful listening he creates that will get the group into real cooperation and eventually into an agreement.