Classic Film: Punishment Park (1971)

August 1, 2011 in Film, Politics, Videos | Permalink

Early in his career, Peter Watkins made documentary-style narrative films that were so politically charged as to be almost unreleasable. Two of these were particularly great. The War Game, from 1965, shows the horrors that would befall Britain if the nation engaged in a nuclear war. It was so convincing that it was banned from broadcast in its native country and won a Best Documentary Oscar despite not being a documentary. Punishment Park, from 1971, takes things  a step further. Set in America in the wake of Kent State, Watkins exaggerates the truly tumultuous divide between conservatives and radicals, creating a landscape so brutal and bitter that nuclear devastation might seem the lesser evil.

In America, young, anti-establishment activists who oppose the Vietnam War or support Black Power are arrested, interrogated and tried before a jury of peerless right-wingers. The convicted can either do decades in prison, or they can try their luck in Punishment Park. A punitive expanse of cracked earth in the California desert, Punishment Park is an obstacle course of sorts in which prisoners must complete a 53-mile trek with armed officers in pursuit. If they successfully finish the course in sweltering temperatures and reach an American flag at journey’s end, they will supposedly be released. But the sweet release of death seems more likely with the numerous threats to their well-being.

There’s a scene in which a young officer opens fire on a group of the political prisoners, and is almost immediately interviewed by the faux documentary crew, as he cries and pleads in confusion. The passage comes as close to recreating the visceral pain of the tragedy at Kent State as is imaginable. During an era when the news was the scariest show on TV and the pseudo-documentary was the perfect approach, Watkins presented a searing vision intended to jolt those who were sleepwalking through the nightmare.•

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