Blu-ray Review: Punishment Park - A Timely Re-Release
A very welcome and important release of a truly revolutionary film. Required viewing.
Rating: There is a period in American cinema history commonly referred to as the 'New Hollywood' era, in which filmmakers sought to undermine the prevailing conservative ideology of Nixon's America from within the studio system itself. American directors such as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, Dennis Hopper and Robert Altman are usually linked to such films. While they remain interesting films today, their power - or perceived radicalism - is arguably diminished through the sands of time. One film from this period, which is largely unseen, has refused to allow the corrosive passing of time liquidate its message. Punishment Park was stubbornly ignored by the Hollywood studio system, was written and directed by an Oscar-winning Englishman - Peter Watkins - and is undoubtedly one of the most persuasive and revolutionary films from the Vietnam period of American history. The film is as hauntingly relevant and prescient today as it was then. Set in an indeterminate near-feature, the film approaches the prevailing social concerns of a country on the brink of self-destruction with a faux-documentary style. The story concerns one of America's imagined 'Punishment Parks'. These 'Parks' are offered as an alternative to a custodial sentence for the large swathes of protesting liberals who would eventually find political vindication through the Watergate scandal. Rather than spend 10 or more years in a correctional facility, the convicted are instead challenged to reach an American flag some 50 miles or so from their starting destination. Their starting (and finishing) destination is the searing heat of a Californian desert. They will not be furnished with water. They must reach the flag before they are apprehended by the National Guard and Los Angeles police forces, otherwise they will serve the full duration of the sentence previously handed to them. The film opens on the image of the stars and stripes that constitute the American flag - the one which would appear to offer salvation to the accused. It is flying backwards. Watkins' narrates the film himself from behind the camera, which roams hand-held across the unforgiving desert landscape. We view the progress of two different groups of detainees. One group has already been 'convicted' and is beginning their desert assault; another is in the process of their tribunal hearings. It's a simple but clever strategy, allowing us an insight into the injustice of the judicial process and the even more unlawful 'game' played in the Punishment Park itself. The film pulls no punches and has lost none of its anger and intelligence. Watkins cast activists in the roles of the convicts, and tried as best he could to fill the law enforcement roles with ex-officers and the tribunal panel with concerned conservatives. What results is a volatile cocktail, one in which the anger and passion emanating from the young activists on trial is genuine and convincing. While the film remains a 'fiction' - let's use that term loosely - it works so believably as a documentary that the rage and hopelessness on show soon seeps into the viewer, making this an intense, yet unmistakably important, watch. The film's re-release could not possibly have been more appropriate. With social media and the unstoppable (well, perhaps not...) freedoms afforded by the internet, enabling greater social mobility in terms of political activism, the film's message remains terrifyingly clear: the establishment will not stand for it. With the Occupy Movement still refusing to disintegrate, and last year's London riots burned indelibly into our collective recent memories, Punishment Park's vision acts as both a warning and an impassioned call to arms for the restless masses.