BONUS BLOG -- 1971: PUNISHMENT PARK

What’s it about?

In an alternate version of early 1970s America, the government has taken to sentencing “political criminals” (i.e., hippies, dissidents, draft dodgers, and the like) to serving brief but brutal stints in newly designated punishment parks throughout the country. The park featured in this movie is a desert wasteland in southern California. Any prisoner sentenced there has three days to make it fifty miles across the desert with no food or water to a checkpoint. If they succeed, they can go free. But if they are “apprehended” by law enforcement officers (who use the parks as a training ground) then they are taken to prison to serve out whatever their original sentence would have been.

Except for waiting two hours to give the prisoners a head start, the law enforcement officers have no restrictions on how they can hunt down the fugitives. They use vehicles, radios, and weapons with live ammunition to aid in their pursuit. Though they claim they won’t use violence unless the prisoners resist when they are apprehended, none of the prisoners believe them. And when a group of prisoners fights back and succeeds in killing a deputy, the game turns even more deadly.




Is it any good?

This is another documentary-style sci-fi movie from British director Peter Watkins -- the third that I’ve watched for this blog. The first one I watched, THE WAR GAME (1965), ranks among the most riveting movies I have ever seen in my life. But the second one, THE GLADIATORS (1970), was dull and disappointing. So I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from PUNISHMENT PARK. Based on what I knew about the movie, it sounded like it was more along the lines of THE GLADIATORS, so I was almost steeling myself to be bored. The DVD I had also included an introduction from Peter Watkins which consisted largely of the director reading from several densely typewritten pages about how PUNISHMENT PARK has been unfairly ignored by everybody for twenty minutes. The omens, then, were not so good.

Luckily, the bad omens never panned out. One of the biggest differences between the other two Peter Watkins movies I had watched is that THE WAR GAME depicts events that could have very plausibly taken place (a nuclear war), whereas the subject of THE GLADIATORS are much more allegorical and detached (an isolated institute where countries fight out wars using small numbers of troops). At first, I figured PUNISHMENT PARK would fall on the allegorical and detached side of the line, but there’s a few interesting things about the movie that give it much more of a punch than expected.




To start with, the premise behind PUNISHMENT PARK is mostly well within the realm of believability. The dissidents are tried by a civilian tribunal that operates outside the traditional American justice system. The defendants are presumed guilty and although they have a chance to state their case, the arguments are more about philosophy and politics than they are about evidence. I’m not going to try and rate how close the United States has come to systems like these in its history (though this country has certainly had its dark spots), but drumhead trials with foregone conclusions are nothing new or even especially unusual in the history of the world.

The arguments that do come up during the trials are also absolutely real ones on both sides of the debate. The tribunal members show a surprising indulgence in letting the accused speak and in responding to them with their own arguments. (Though there is an awful of indignant shouting on both sides, and as soon as things seem to be going badly for the tribunal they have the defendants hauled out.) But supposedly these trials were all unscripted -- Peter Watkins let the actors come up with their own arguments and just let them play out. Some of the establishment types were even supposedly conservatives who genuinely opposed the hippie movement. But the effect is that the movie serves as an interesting document of countercultural and mainstream opinions of the early 1970s, and the inability of the two sides to find common ground in their interactions.




The actual hunt through the desert should probably be the movie’s Achilles heel, and honestly it isn’t very plausible. Whether you believe that it’s possible that the United States might start holding summary trials of its own citizens and sentencing them to prison without due process, the idea that there would also exist a systemic punishment plan that involved hunting prisoners across deserts is pretty absurd. But despite the absurdity, the situation acts as a pretty powerful allegory for the dilemma of the countercultural movement. On the one hand, they find themselves trapped in a game with arbitrary rules that are clearly stacked against them. But if they refuse to play the game, then they will simply be apprehended and sent to prison -- or possibly worse.

Most of the hippies decide to play the game, since they see it as their best chance for survival (and some believe that they can even possibly “win”). They go along with the insane rules set up by the government, even though it’s obvious that the whole thing is designed to force them to fail. The others who refuse to play the game (and who wait in ambush for the cops instead of running) mock the rest of the hippies as hypocrites -- by even consenting to play the game, they are giving legitimacy to a corrupt system.




Just to be clear, anybody who is looking for an unbiased view of 1970s politics won’t find it here. Watkins is clearly on the side of the counterculture -- though the hippies don’t always come across as heroes and martyrs. Some of them come across as weak or snotty or naive or dangerous. They are also the first to use violence, and at one point even threaten the life of an innocent hostage. None of them deserve the kind of punishment they’re getting, however. And although Watkins lets the establishment make its arguments in a reasonable way much of the time, the fact still remains that the cops shoot down a lot of unresisting unarmed kids.

If I believed the movie was saying that this is an accurate portrait of America, ca. 1970, then I would probably be pretty offended. Pieces and parts of it are certainly accurate in isolated instances, but in general the picture doesn’t reflect what America is about. But I think the movie is in fact has two other far less objectionable messages. First, it can be seen as saying that this was how a certain segment of the population felt America was treating them at the time. And second, it could be saying that the government could easily usurp such powers on a wide scale if the people permit it. Either of those things I think are true -- some people DO believe that America is a fascist state, and the government really COULD quickly become frightening if the people let it. I also think they are important things to understand and be aware of. So even though I should probably be offended that some British panty-waist is making inflammatory movies about my country, I guess I will just say that he makes a couple of good points.



The movie does start to drag a bit as it goes along. After all, there are only so many times that you can listen to the same arguments over and over again. But at least there are characters to care about (mostly only among the hippies, but a little among the establishment) and ideas to think about. Things do get a little hysterical at times, and it's difficult to understand why the cops are so brutal when they know that a film crew is following them around. But if nothing else, the movie is a very interesting experiment in improvisation and an instructive document about attitudes that seemingly only survive in small paranoid pockets today.

Anyway, the final score puts Peter Watkins at 2 for 3. THE WAR GAME is still far and away his best, but PUNISHMENT PARK is well worth watching if you like unusual narratives and don't mind listening to a lot of angry hippies.

1971: THX 1138

What’s it about?

Robert Duvall plays THX 1138, a citizen of a sterile indoor city of the future. He has a dangerous job in the factory that produces the robotic policemen who patrol the city, a “mate” whom he is forbidden from having sex with, a holographic television, and a cocktail of drugs to keep him sedated and contented. But he has recently found himself losing his focus and experiencing strange emotions -- and ultimately it’s revealed that his mate has been making substitutions in his drug regimen to flush the sedatives from his system.

The un-sedated Duvall wastes no time in discovering sex, but he is observed by the all-seeing authorities who begin to monitor him closely. Meanwhile, a twitchy surveillance technician (played by Donald Pleasance) starts illegally modifying system software to get himself assigned as Duvall's roommate. The robotic police soon arrest them both and take them to a featureless white prison with no walls. Duvall and Pleasance soon escape with the help of a holographic television star. Once back in the city, more chases ensue until Duvall manages to make it to the world outside.




Is it any good?

THX 1138 is famously George Lucas’s first feature, adapted from a short student film he produced in 1967. The version I watched is a re-edited one with some new scenes and special effects that Lucas added for the DVD release in 2004. (As far as I know, no other version is available on DVD.) Besides being Lucas’s first feature film, THX 1138 is also one of only six that he has directed -- the others being AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1973), STAR WARS (1977), and the three recent STAR WARS prequels. That being the case, it’s surprising to me how little attention this movie seems to get -- there are millions of fans of STAR WARS who apparently have no interest at all in THX 1138.

I can’t say that I had a whole lot of interest myself until I started watching it. Despite knowing that it existed for many years, I never bothered to seek it out. That’s partly because (like most people) I have mixed feelings about STAR WARS and its sequels. But it’s more likely because I had just never heard very much about THX 1138 before -- nobody seemed to be talking about it, so I didn’t feel any urgency to go out and see it.

I’m not even going to try and compare THX 1138 to any of George Lucas’s other movies. I’ve never seen AMERICAN GRAFFITI, and STAR WARS and its sequels have such cultural ubiquity that it’s almost absurd to even think of them simply as movies. I will say that it was kind of amazing to see a George Lucas movie for which I had absolutely no expectations. I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t know who Darth Vader was or what storm troopers looked like, but I knew practically nothing about THX 1138 before I sat down to watch it.




Well, that’s not exactly true. The story and setting are pretty familiar, after all. The oppressive society in THX 1138 is a variation on the one found in George Orwell’s NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR or Aldous Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD. It’s not exactly the same as either, but there are dystopian elements that are very familiar -- the constant surveillance, the compulsory consumerism, the faceless enforcement figures, the manipulation of sexuality, the elimination of emotion and love, the state-mandated pharmaceuticals, and so on. Some of these elements crop up in earlier movies as well. Besides the 1956 version of NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR, similar extreme visions of oppressive societies show up in ALPHAVILLE (1965) and FAHRENHEIT 451 (1966). And the paranoid obsession with constant surveillance and control is a big part of movies like THE 1,000 EYES OF DR MABUSE (1960), THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1961), SECONDS (1966), and COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT (1970).

This is not to say that THX 1138 is derivative or unoriginal. I think it’s more a case of the movie being “of its time”. Orwell and Huxley wrote their novels in response to the totalitarian surveillance societies that coalesced during the rise of Fascism and Communism in Europe. But those regimes hunted down dissidents the old-fashioned way -- by accusations gathered through infiltration, entrapment, coercion, or fabrication. These kinds of things show up in the dystopian sci-fi flicks of the 1960s as well -- for instance, Robert Duvall informs on Donald Pleasance’s deviancy in THX 1138, which leads directly to his arrest. But these movies also resonate differently since ubiquitous video cameras and tape recorders were (and are) no longer the science-fiction trappings that they were for Orwell and Huxley. These themes became even more urgent after the abuses of the Nixon administration were exposed in the Watergate scandal, and they’ve never really gone away since then.

As far as the story goes, it’s a variation on the standard dystopian theme. There are a few neat twists though -- I really liked how Duvall’s mate needed to alter his drug mix before she could turn him into a co-conspirator. And since the story is told entirely from Duvall’s point of view, he starts to feel disoriented and confused long before he (or the audience) knows what’s happening to him or why. Another nice bit is that Duvall actually needs his drugs to safely do his job -- without the sedatives, he runs the risk of dropping radioactive and explosive materials during some delicate assembly operations. It’s not clear whether his need is physical or psychological, but either way it adds a much more serious element of danger to his decision to stay off the pills.




Donald Pleasance’s character is also a bit of an enigma. Like Duvall’s mate, his job is to watch a bank of monitors and coordinate security responses to deviant behavior. Apparently he takes a shine to Duvall while observing him during his hours on the job, but it’s not exactly clear what form his interest takes. The “mate” relationship in the world of THX 1138 is completely asexual, so it could simply be that the fussy Pleasance wants a roommate who will annoy him less than his current one. But watching the monitors means that Pleasance isn’t ignorant of sex -- and probably isn’t even ignorant of Duvall’s own sexual activity. So it seems at least reasonable that there might be some element of desire to his motives. Pleasance also seems more in touch with his emotions, though it’s not clear whether he’s off his drugs or not.

The futuristic world is very white, very sterile, and very inhuman. The vision of the future has a lot in common with the one in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) -- but with one important exception. I said that I got the feeling from 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY that the movie took place the night before opening day in space -- that is, that the pristine spaceships and whatnot were being prepared for an onslaught of people who hadn’t arrived yet. In THX 1138, everything is still clean and pristine, but there’s also a sense that a lot of things are broken just below the surface. There are a lot of little throwaway scenes that show various bits of technology failing -- an elevator refusing to work, a robotic policeman running into a shut door over and over, and so on. The future isn’t dirty yet in this movie (we have to wait for STAR WARS for that), but it certainly has a lot of bugs. This isn’t the night before opening day -- it’s just another day in the peak season where the Hall of Presidents is closed for repairs.

The world is very minimalist as well. The starkest example of this is the prison where Duvall and Pleasance are incarcerated in the middle of the movie. It’s literally nothing more than a white space with a couple of couches. There are no walls -- instead, the whiteness stretches infinitely in all directions, making it impossible to see the way out and very easy to get lost. But Duvall’s apartment and the shows on the holographic television are minimalist as well. For a society that supposedly values mindless consumerism, there are really very few things to buy or desire. Instead, people simply take home useless geometric shapes (“dendrites”, according to the film commentary) which they then destroy and buy again the next day. But the consumerist angle is the least convincing and least interesting part of the movie -- whatever point they were trying to make gets wiped out by the production design and the lack of real attention to it in the script.




The robotic policemen, however, are one of the coolest and most interesting parts of the movie. The combination of police uniforms with expressionless silver faces is very creepy and compelling. There are some other scattered images here and there that are not so well integrated into the story -- a lot of the beginning of the movie is devoted to very brief unconnected vignettes (some involving the main characters, others not) of life in the city. They each last maybe five seconds or so, but they give a real sense of what the world is like. It also gives the movie a higher density of information so that it’s not always obvious exactly what’s happening or if it relates to the story. After skimming through the movie a second time to get some screenshots, I’m pretty confident that it all makes sense and that there is a clear story to it. But the little bits of unconnected business make it more interesting to rewatch since there’s a good chance that some little bit slipped by unnoticed the first time.

I do think the movie starts to go downhill a bit after Duvall and Pleasance are sent to prison. It becomes a much more self-consciously artsy movie in the middle section, before abruptly switching to a long (but pretty ho-hum) chase sequence at the end by foot and car. But the movie is always interesting to look at, and small parts of the future world are pretty thoroughly realized. (Vast sections remain unexplored, obviously.) The plot and characters are extremely simple, and nobody does very much acting in the movie, but most of that fits pretty well with the dystopian, emotionless setting. As I said before, I am not even going to attempt to compare this to STAR WARS, but I can say that right now I would far rather watch THX 1138 again than any of the six movies that George Lucas is most famous for.



What else happened this year?

-- Peter Watkins delivers yet another sci-fi documentary with PUNISHMENT PARK, this one about a government detention center where political dissidents (i.e., hippies and draft dodgers) are hunted down in a law enforcement training program.
-- Michael Crichton's break-out novel THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN was adapted into a very effective "how done it" about a lethal alien disease.
-- Take Roddy MacDowell and Kim Hunter as Cornelius and Zira from THE PLANET OF THE APES; add in Ricardo Montalban, Sal Mineo, Eric Braeden, a funky score, and a time travel plot that brings talking chimps back in time to the 1970s; mix well and serve as ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES.
-- Charlton Heston, meanwhile, imports his cynical, world-weary persona practically wholesale into THE OMEGA MAN -- the second adaptation of Richard Matheson's novella I AM LEGEND.
-- Stanley Kubrick directed A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, about which I assume everybody has already formed their own opinion. (I don't like it much.)

If you only watch one movie from 1971...

THX 1138 is the one that I would recommend, but PUNISHMENT PARK is pretty interesting and unusual as well. THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN and THE OMEGA MAN are both more typical (but still solid) choices too.

1962: LA JETÉE

What’s it about?

A soldier in post-apocalyptic France is captured by the enemy and sent to a prison camp in dark catacombs under a city that appears to be Paris. In fact, all survivors of the war now live underground to escape the deadly radiation that permeates the surface of the Earth. Realizing that the irradiated world above no longer has the resources to support humanity, the enemy scientists begin work on a time travel program designed to cull necessary resources from the past and the future. Prisoners are used for the dangerous experiments -- and when it comes the French soldier’s turn, several subjects have already died or gone insane as a result of the experiments.

Sent successfully back in time, the soldier encounters a woman he remembers glimpsing once in his childhood. They strike up a friendship, and then a romance. The woman -- a memory of an almost forgotten pre-war world -- becomes a focal point for the soldier’s time traveling, and eventually he is able to visit the past almost at will. But no sooner does he realize this then the scientists fling him forward in time to beg help from humanity’s futuristic descendants. Knowing he will be executed after completing his mission, the soldier seeks a way to escape through time back to the days of his childhood and the woman he has grown to love.




Is it any good?

Only half an hour long, LA JETÉE is not a movie in the traditional sense. Instead, the story is told entirely through a montage of black and white still photographs combined with narration, music, and sound effects. As such, it’s very simple -- characters exist only as faces and short narrated descriptions. It’s less dramatic than even a radio play or a short story, and yet even stripped down to such bare essentials it is still very interesting indeed.

The short running time helps, of course. And even though the images themselves don’t move, they do change every few seconds. Paradoxically, this means that LA JETÉE often shows more of any particular scene that a typical motion picture does -- instead of cutting back and forth between two people exchanging dialogue during a two-minute scene, the photographs here can roam around and show the actors and environment from every possible angle. And each shot is carefully framed to communicate either information or emotion. Watching LA JETÉE isn’t like looking at photo stills or a storyboard for a movie -- it’s like paging through a book of carefully composed photographs.




The extreme simplicity of the movie also gives the story a fable-like quality that doesn’t really feel like any other sci-fi movie that has come before. In some ways, it feels so startlingly different that it seems it must have sprung fully-formed from the mind of a visionary, rather than being the natural product of organic developments in the genre. But even though there may not be film antecedents to LA JETÉE (and I don’t know for sure there aren’t), there were certainly many sci-fi novels and stories in the 1950s and 1960s that formed the tradition it draws from. So, taken in the context of the other movies of the time, LA JETÉE is a reminder of how little of the genre’s possibilities had yet been explored on film even by 1962.

Though the post-apocalyptic catacombs and the future world are briefly depicted, it doesn’t seem that LA JETÉE is really interested in speculating on fantastic worlds. Instead, it lingers on the ordinary world of every-day modern Paris, which is what the time-traveling soldier sees as fantastic. The movie is a meditation -- it’s absorbed in its own premise and in no hurry to trade quiet contemplation for action or character or plot. The basic story was later used by Terry Gilliam as the basis for his movie 12 MONKEYS (1995), but watching LA JETÉE is a very different experience indeed.




What else happened this year?

-- John Frankenheimer’s THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE casts Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury in a paranoid conspiracy thriller about brainwashing, McCarthyism, communist plots, and political assassinations.
-- Actor Ray Milland took one of his few turns as director with the nuclear war thriller PANIC IN YEAR ZERO!
-- I can’t really in good conscience recommend THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN’T DIE to anybody, but it has a couple unforgettable scenes at the very end. HANDS OF A STRANGER, on the other hand, is less memorable but overall a better movie about the same kind of themes.

If you only watch one sci-fi movie from 1962...

It might as well be LA JETÉE. It’s easier to watch than it sounds, but if you prefer something less experimental then go with THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE instead.