Patty Hearst, d. Paul Schrader (1988)
'Marie Antoinette didn't know anything about the French Revolution until they cut off her head'.
On February 4th, 1974, 19 year old heiress Patty Hearst was kidnapped by a terrorist group called the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). The original plan was for the SLA to exchange her for some imprisoned comrades, but this didn't happen, and the group refused all offers of ransom money from her parents.
After two months of imprisonment, sensory deprivation, indoctrination, intimidation and rape, Patty was given the choice to 'join or die' so, on April 15th, she helped the SLA rob a bank whilst wielding a machine gun.
Hearst was finally returned to her family in September 1975, 17 months after being taken prisoner. The following year, she was sentenced to seven years in prison for bank robbery and using a firearm during the commissioning of a felony. Brainwashing was not used as a defence, as it had no precedent in law. The sentencing Judge stated: 'rebellious young people who, for whatever reason become revolutionaries, and voluntarily commit criminal acts will be punished'. Motherfuckers*.
Paul Schrader's fast moving film is unambiguous about the ordeal that the previously sheltered and naive Hearst goes through, and Natasha Richardson plays Patty as permanently scared, off-balance and confused (her IQ dropped by about 30 points during her captivity, and her health was seriously affected). Crammed into a small apartment, the SLA spend their time doing calisthenics, posing with guns and sleeping with each other. Worst of all, THEY WILL NOT STOP TALKING, not even for a moment - endlessly and monotonously droning on about race, about class, about power, about violence, about sex, about money, about offing pigs- the whole scene is claustrophobic, suffocating, stultifying, deafening - it makes your brain itch. After half an hour I was ready to shoot someone.
*Hearst was released after two years at the behest of President Carter, and later pardoned.
I remember half-watching a documentary about Hearst many years ago and was struck by a sequence of staccato security camera images from a bank raid which made it look like she was dancing, in her Bonnie Parker Beret with machine gun in hand. Powerful imagery captured and, to an extent, interpreted by an unthinking eye.
ReplyDelete