Punishment Park is a brilliant piece of cinema. Shot in the Southern
California desert using his patent faux documentary style, Watkins
creates a film like no other. He follows two groups of prisoners (one
pre-sentenced the other post-sentenced) throughout the picture. After
they're tried by a military tribunal, they have the choice of either
serving out a prison sentence or they can participate in Punishment
Park (a grueling three day hike through the desert with nothing but the
clothes on their backs) whilst being hunted down by local law
enforcement officers who use the park as a live action training
ground). I can't say enough about this movie. Sometimes it feels as if
you're watching a real documentary. This is one of Peter Watkins most
accessible films. I advise you to look out for it. You wont regret it!
Highly recommended
A+
Punishment Park
1971
Action / Drama / Thriller
Punishment Park
1971
Action / Drama / Thriller
Plot summary
"Punishment Park" is a pseudo-documentary purporting to be a film crews's news coverage of the team of soldiers escorting a group of hippies, draft dodgers, and anti-establishment types across the desert in a type of capture the flag game. The soldiers vow not to interfere with the rebels' progress and merely shepherd them along to their destination. At that point, having obtained their goal, they will be released. The film crew's coverage is meant to insure that the military's intentions are honorable. As the representatives of the 60's counter-culture get nearer to passing this arbitrary test, the soldiers become increasingly hostile, attempting to force the hippies out of their pacifist behavior. A lot of this film appears improvised and in several scenes real tempers seem to flare as some of the "acting" got overaggressive. This is a interesting exercise in situational ethics. The cinéma vérité style, hand-held camera, and ambiguous demands of the director - would the actors be able to maintain their roles given the hazing they were taking - pushed some to the brink. The cast's emotions are clearly on the surface. Unfortunately this film has gone completely underground and is next to impossible to find. It would offer a captivating document of the distrust that existed between soldiers willfully serving in the military and those persons who opposed the war peacefully.
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Peter Watkins' Masterpiece.
the more things change, the more they stay the same...
To think this film was made the year I was born. To think people are still having their constitutional rights taken away, now in the name of "homeland security". To think this movie was intentionally banned from the American public. PUNISHMENT PARK addresses the political divide in the United States better than any movie I've ever seen. Had it been more widely seen, would it have changed anything? A movie like this is so polarizing, it has the potential to cause riots. It shakes you up and forces you to take sides. It makes you face the issue: are you for the people's right of dissent in a time of war, or for the constitution being compromised in the name of "national security"? The protagonists are forced by the government to race to the American flag in a game that undermines the very ideals the flag stands for. The acting is totally convincing. So much so, I can't see any acting going on here at all. If this is a scripted documentary, it's more convincing than any reality show on television today. PUNISHMENT PARK is possibly the most important film ever made. It really makes you think.
another chillingly accurate depiction of days of future present from Watkins
You can't watch a film like Peter Watkins' "Privilege," a story of the exploitation of a pop music performer by big business, the state, and even organized religion, without thinking of creatively degenerate commodities like Michael Jackson or Britney Spears, who hawk corporate giants like Pepsi or some other poison for money. Or any number of entertainers, in music or movies, who become tools of political parties or commercial religious interests like Scientology and Kabbalah. A film like Privilege must have seemed almost like science fiction when released in 1967, so fantastic was its premise. Today we tend to take celebrity endorsements for granted, giving little thought to its more alarming implications. Watkins' vision has not only become reality, we tacitly accept this reality as "normal."
Now consider Punishment Park. As Privilege challenges the viewer to examine what is being sold to us, and why, Punishment Park demands that we reckon with what is being taken from us, and why.
Heaven help America, and for that matter the world, if contemporary politicians get their hands on this film. It is already so close to reality, that in viewing it recently, I experienced a genuine, nauseating feeling of anxiety.
Watkins again skillfully employs a documentary-style narrative. Whereas in Privilege some rough edges to this technique were apparent, in Punishment Park it has been honed to sharp, seamless perfection. The sense of realism is enhanced by disarmingly unpretentious, economical, believable portrayals by the entire cast. This is the kind of acting Hollywood has completely turned its back on, to its detriment, in favor of cosmetically perfect image projections. The cast has first-rate material to work with in Watkins' screenplay.
Many cinematic visionaries have tried to shake the viewer out of their complacent, false sense of security. No one has ever achieved this result with such stark and chilling accuracy as Peter Watkins does here.
"What seems quite clear now, is that instead of trying to bring the estranged and excluded Americans, such as these people, back into the national community, the Administration has chosen to accept and exploit the present division within the country, and to side with what it considers is the majority. Instead of the politics of reconciliation, it has chosen the politics of polarization."
To paraphrase one of the characters, we don't have to call them pigs because they know what they are. Better than we do.