To reiterate what I stated at the end of Thursday's class:
--You have to watch Weather Underground at home
--I strongly encourager you to watch at least parts of Berkeley in the 60s
--I will screen The Company You Keep in class on Monday
As for your blog post: it must engage Weather Underground and depending on what you've covered in previous blogs you may or may not have to address Company You Keep as well. (Consult assignment description....). You may but don't have to address Berkeley.
If you have questions please let me know.
“‘We are SDS.’ Forty years ago, those three letters meant so much: today, to anyone under forty, they mean nothing at all.”
ReplyDeleteAnd so it goes.
In Robert Redford’s roman à clef "The Company You Keep", Richard Jenkin’s character, a college professor named Jed Lewis, says “It’s ancient history,” “it” being the student movement of the late 1960s (along with the SDS and the Weather Underground, etc.). He also goes on to say “Now we’re just a story told to children.”. These two quotes from the film mirror the one above from Mark Sinker’s "Film Quarterly" article, as well as the reflective interviews at the end of Sam Green and Bill Siegel’s "The Weather Underground", specifically when former Weatherman Mark Rudd says “I still don’t know what to do with this knowledge. I don’t know what needs to be done now. And it’s still eating away at me just as it did thirty years ago.” the knowledge he speaks of being the knowledge of understanding the position of the United States in the world at large.
To summarize, (most of, not all, of course) the adults in these films have been leading a “normal” life for decades now, and to come back and reflect upon their radical actions, years removed from the mass hysteria and protests that surrounded them, they seem to realize that maybe their movement ended up causing more harm than doing good. Or, as Sinker put it; “Even 'The Weather Underground', with its participants at such unresolved extremes, its bombs and inner flight—angry American youth bringing the Vietnam War home—fashions a stolid, meager consensus from its elements.”
Some questions one might ask is “How did such revolutionaries with grandiose ideas and actions, become so comfortable with conformity and leading a normal life? Why did they grow tired of running? And why do most people under forty (myself included, before taking this class at least) not know about 68? And even if they do, why doesn’t it inspire a new SDS, or something similar to?”
Both "The Company You Keep" and "The Weather Underground" showcase a group of once radical revolutionaries, and how the years have aged the look of their skin as well as the thickness of it, and how the student/youth movements of the late 60s may be the last of their kind.
P.S. Also just wanted to point out the kickass use of Aphex Twin in "The Weather Underground" :)
Robert Redford’s The Company You Keep is a safe film; it treads lightly around political parties, careful not to step on any right or left toes, by making its politics merely a background element to the larger suspense and chase element of the narrative. We get a brief historical piece from authentic news segments during the time that casually establish the political nature of the Weather Underground as well as Sharon Solarz’s interview with Shia and that’s basically it until Eric Sloan and Mimi Lurie meet in the cabin. Children of the Revolution posed this question before, “what does it mean for a family when one of its members goes underground?” and Redford’s film sort of picks it up as well, though in a confusing manner.
ReplyDeleteLuckily we, the class, have an understanding of the political background having watched The Weather Underground documentary. As opposed to the Baader-Meinhof group, where the core leaders are dead, we can get the insights of the past revolutionary acts from the people who played a significant role in the bombings and leadership. And surprisingly, The Company You Keep is rather accurate in creating a conglomeration of the actual reactions into the fictional characters that never existed. Both of the documentaries, The Weather Underground and Berkley in the Sixties, have the sense that the participants of the protests and revolutionary movements truly believed in what they were doing, but over estimated their effectiveness until the clarity of hindsight allowed them to reflect.
At the end, however, The Company You Keep makes the statement that maintaining domestic stability is the right choice; Lurie is basically a caricature of a left wing “former” hippie, placing revolution above family and complaining about how capitalism keeps the average person down. To which Eric responds, “We were wrong.” But Lurie redeems herself and turns herself in, so Eric and his daughter can walk perfectly centered in a long take as they walk off into the credits.
Collin, I think you discuss some very interesting points in regards to how these films relate to one another, as well as comparing them to "The Baader-Meinhof Complex" and its handling of a similar revolutionary group. “The Weather Underground” documentary effectively gave the background of the time period and how it ultimately led to the formation of the Weatherman. By interviewing the former members, Sam Green and Bill Siegel were able to provide an answer as to what was really going through the heads of those involved with the revolution. What was there thought process? How did things escalate so quickly? Do they still feel the same way or do they regret what they did, attributing it to being an idealistic youth? What were they really fighting for/against? (An interesting moment concerning this occurs in “Berkeley in the Sixties” after the students are victorious with their Free Speech movement on campus. One of the women being interviewed recalls that she thought their fight was over and was leaving during Mario Savio’s speech until he essentially said not to go, because they were now going to protest the war. This was important because it showed the revolutionary nature of the times as people moved (and fought) from one issue to another.)
DeleteThese questions get some form of answer in “The Weather Underground” in a way that was not possible with Baader-Meinhof. Although it was interesting to see the perspectives of Meinhof’s daughter in “Children of the Revolution,” the film could only do so much with her individual understandings and speculations of her mother’s actions. We get no first hand explanation from those directly involved. “The Weather Underground” is especially interesting because we are shown how many of the participants feel differently than one another about the events they were involved in, as they even explain the differing views that were present as they were revolting back in the 60’s/70’s. It is in this documentary that we also learn how the Black Panthers eventually ended up not wanting to be associated with the Weatherman, displaying the confusing and ever-changing nature of that period. With all of these things combined, the film gives some sort of explanation, which is critical in trying to understand these events without simply labeling the individuals involved as terrorists. Instead, “The Weather Underground,” provides first hand accounts from the individuals who were directly involved with the Weatherman, ultimately creating a solid foundation for understanding, or attempting to understand, everything that happened in the 60’s/70’s in relation to them (as well as providing very useful background information for viewing “The Company You Keep”).
Both Sam Green and Bill Siegel’s documentary “The Weather Underground” and Robert Redford’s “The Company you Keep” comment on this generations lack of revolutionary impulses, and their ignorance of the history of radical resistance against the US government in the late 60s and early 70s. I personally had never heard of the Weather Underground before screening the documentary. All I recognized from the film was Bill Ayers name which I remember from the 2008 presidential campaign when anti-Obama ads accused him of having close ties to a known terrorist. Mark Rudd, one of the leaders of the Weathermen now teaches at a community college. He explains that sometimes his students will ask him what he did during the Vietnam War. When he responds, he says his students look at him like he’s from a different planet. He later concludes that most Americans respond to violence not sanctioned by the government as either criminal or mentally insane.
ReplyDeleteIn Redford’s fictional account of these characters decades after their involvement with the Underground, Richard Jenkins plays Jed Lewis, a former revolutionary and current professor. Jenkins also explains to Redford that his students don’t really know how to respond to his lectures on the time period. He says they are active listeners who seem interested but who eventually update their facebook accounts and forget all about it because it is so distant to them. Jenkins’ lecture is also interesting because of his opinion of history. He claims that history is shaped by individuals’ actions, not by social constructs or conditions. The film seems to agree with this conclusion by putting such emphasis on the action of Julie Christie’s character at the end of the film. Christie’s decision to give up the revolutionary life and submit herself to the system she despises is the film’s culminating message. The film concludes it’s time to grow up, and while resistance is important, family life and children take priority. This is also shown as a personal decision reached by Redford’s argument working away at Christie’s conscience and completely unrelated to historical or social events. Christie’s decision is visualized in an aerial shot showing her boat literally change course in the opposite direction after a close up of her tearing up at the helm.
Redford’s film may attribute too much to the individual. As the documentary points out, the Weather Underground did not just pop out of nowhere. It was a reaction to the Vietnam War, and was also influenced by the Black Panther Party, the hippie movement, and the student revolutions going on around the globe. Similarly, the group didn’t fold because one individual decided it, but because the Vietnam War was over and the group lacked a guiding purpose to keep going, especially since it never really garnered an enormous support from the American public anyway.
The documentary lets its subjects tell the story of the Weather Underground, and finishes with its members own thoughts on it. Some of them completely regret their involvement in it, and others would do it again if they were given a chance. Redford’s film does come to a conclusion on the correct moral way on how to look at these events in hindsight. It doesn’t necessarily come out against the group, but it does seem to suggest it crossed the line, that resistance is important until it affects the innocent people involved in the revolutionary’s lives.
Both The Weather Underground (2003) and The Company You Keep (2012) look back at an epoch of radical, violent—justifiable and needed, in my opinion—activism through the lens of a forceful rationalization of the motivations of revolutionaries. This is the most problematic facet with the contemporariness of the point of view. The “to look back” searches for the “real” motives behind the actions rather than going down into the complexities of the context, environment, atmosphere, and politics.
ReplyDeleteDespite the difference of genres, the personal needs of understanding are foregrounded and tint the films. The Weather Underground, through the usage of various points of views, over-voice memoir narration, television footage, and intertitles tries to give a wider, more objective scope through its genre. The Company you keep, is in many ways limited by its fiction, blockbuster characteristics. Nevertheless, both films seem trapped in the complexity of the situation. They are trying to educate a new generation, but also, trying to understand. As pointed by Stephen Farber back in 1970-71, “one of the chief difficulties with these socially conscious youth movies is deciding whom they are designed for. Are they propaganda films made to convert older people to the student cause? Are they new mass-audience entertainments simply to exploit the fantasies and fears of the young audience? Or can they be called works of art, created to satisfy the film- makers themselves?” (30-31). I think it still not clear. Are we trying to justify, to understand, to change, or to romanticize the past? Are we trying to convert the opponents of the Sixties, or simply reaching out to the new youth? There will be no simple answer, for that is the worst mistake. Oversimplification will lead to binaries, and if anything, both pieces demonstrate there is a spectrum, and not binaries.
This basic agreement, dictates how through the understanding of the human motivation behind the actions, there is inclination to emotionally sympathize with the human side. In the documentary for example, the clip from Martin Luther King Jr. quoting President Kennedy, “those who make peaceful revolution impossible only make violent revolution inevitable’” seems to denounce the usage of violence, but it's quickly countered with string music playing over footage depicting police violence, racism, Black Panther movements, Vietnam killings, etc. Through its choice of footage, the film develops a tendency to show what will justify the revolutionaries’ actions as a response rather than the initiative of violence.
Looking back at the looking back, the character of Ben Shepard (Shia LaBeouf), is a physical representation of the transformation occurring in the documentary. Trying to start unbiased, simply pursuing to document, both documentary and Ben are transformed by their search to understand the people and not just the actions. The documentary’s influence leaks further into the film, by mirroring quotes from Naomi Jaffe. Finally asking the real question: would they do it again, it shows the real preoccupation with readdressing the past. The documentary’s answer, “I would do it again. I’d like to do it better, differently, smarter, but in a revolutionary context—if I didn’t have my old parents and my young kid—I would certainly do it again,” is almost directly quoted during the jail interview scene between Ben and Sharon, showing that the spirit of revolution never quite dies.
Both The Weather Underground and The Company You Keep are films very much in support of that movement and Jessica made a good point that although The Company You Keep appears to be non–partisan, the rationalization of their actions make it a pro–Weatherman film. One claim both films make that hasn’t been touched upon yet in these blog posts is that childbirth and the formation of “family life” were, in part, major reasons for the group’s disbandment. The Redford film particularly stresses this, as the numerous scenes of Nick Sloan interact with his daughter attempt to create sympathy as a caring father and I believe Sloan’s character himself even states he was a “changed man” after having their daughter. Both films also warrant the Weatherman actions as the only “logical” conclusion and that non–violent college protests like in Berkeley in the 60s were having no consequence to their “shared” goal. The subjects interviewed in Berkeley in the 60s, however, enthusiastically reflect on their actions as necessary and substantial.
DeleteStephen Farber describes the 1970s youth protest films as films that do not have a political agenda since they “do not dramatize – sometimes do not even mention the issues,” but simply an economic agenda to use the current political events to target their major youth audience. Contrasting this, it seems both The Weather Underground and The Company You Keep were made for much older audiences. Both films are told from the perspectives of much older people. The Weather Underground documentary does not include a section of recent/youthful activists commenting on the Weather Underground nor does it include the underground’s “children” like the Children of the Revolution documentary does. Likewise, the Redford film, the story is not about Ben Shepard but Nick Sloan and the other older members and the cast is sprinkled with several “veteran actors,” clearly marking it as a film for older audiences.
A point brought up in Mark Sinker's article 'Catcalling,' and also something I noticed during our screening of 'The Company You Keep": the on-screen presentation of a speaker, even in something as simple as a documentary-style interview, is a powerful tool for influencing the viewer's perception of a subject and thus their allegiances.
ReplyDeleteTo a certain extent, this goes back to the United Red Army unit. There was a huge discrepancy in presentation among the interviewees in O'Sullivan's documentary, noticeable in shot quality, angle, lighting, etc. Masao Adachi was recorded with a high fidelity camera in a studio with soft lighting, implying a certain positivity that he may or may not have earned; the dancer was interviewed in his studio, which is his place of authority, by a camera slightly below his line of sight; Koji Wakamatsu was well below the camera in a dimly-lit bar, almost explicitly inviting the viewer to look down on him.
Sinker brings up a similar point w/r/t 'The Weather Underground' and its treatment of Bill Ayers. Ayers's name is one of the first that has been familiar to me in this course [outside of, you know, LBJ and Mao and the ones everyone knows], mostly due to the Republican effort to connect his U-Chicago professorship with then-nominee Barack Obama, insinuating that Obama would prove to be a socialist and a revolutionary [both counts have proven, disappointingly, false over the course of his administration]. It was surprising, then, for me to see Ayers presented in 'The Weather Underground' as such a calm, confident figure; Sinker goes so far as to call him a 'self-loving young stud.' His pose, his posture, and the camera's willingness to present him at eye level encourages the viewer to take Ayers and his ideology seriously. He is, the film claims without having to spell it out, a legitimate authority on a legitimate movement.
Intimately related is the Redford film 'The Company You Keep' and its presentation, especially, of Sharon Solarz, the character who is allowed at length to discuss the Weathermen and her involvement during the prison interview with Shia LaBeouf [who, yes, is an actor and not a character, but I cannot take him seriously since last summer was a thing]. During her interview, the camera grants her the same kind of preferential treatment: we are across the table from her, at eye level, as if we are in LaBeouf's shoes. When the shot cuts to LaBeouf, it's clear that he is affected by Solarz's speechmaking, which encourages us, the viewers, to also follow Solarz's logic. When the junior agent tells LaBeouf after the interview to not get suckered-in [I think that's what she said], she's looking directly at the camera and speaking not just to him, but also to us.
Additionally, and I don't have the film in front of me, but I'm going to make this claim anyway: Solarz is NEVER on the right side of the shot while appearing on screen. In the kitchen, at the gas station, and in prison, she is always on the left half of the screen. Like, even in the shot/reverse-shot of LaBeouf talking to her, her shoulder occupies the left half of the screen, and LaBeouf is just barely right of center. This could have been a coincidence; it also could be used to represent Solarz's ideological consistency as a leftist who would, she says, do it all again.
Both Sam Green and Bill Siegel’s The Weather Underground and Robert Redford’s The Company You Keep choose to open with the same sequence, a newscast announcing the charges levied against the Weathermen by a federal grand jury. This historical anchor quickly and effectively sets the stage for both films and provides necessary background information on the Weather Underground, namely that they were violent, politically motivated, and (mostly) at large. Despite the shared point of departure, the two films’ engagement with the group’s history begins to differ immensely due to their generic differences, one being a documentary and the other a thriller.
ReplyDeleteThrough member testimonials and innumerable images and video clips from the time period, The Weather Underground engages readily with the historical circumstances and does not hesitate to offer graphic examples of the violence committed both by the United States government and the members of the organization. Robert Redford’s film, in contrast, uses the events as a sort of light contextual framework around which he can construct the narrative of his movie. As Colin pointed out, the characters of the film are amalgamations, combining real people, ideologies, and actions in order to capture some of the sentiments of the movement without getting too “real.” This difference in approach is evidenced well in another moment of similarity when both films use more or less language to discuss the draft and its personal effects. Though both Bill Ayers in The Weather Underground and Susan Sarandon’s character in The Company You Keep make the comment that the draft “wasn’t abstract,” Mr. Ayers’ comments are amplified by news reports and real footage of dying soldiers in bloody carnage of Vietnam while Susan Sarandon’s words are absorbed only by Shia Labeouf. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with Sarandon’s performance or her ability to convey emotion the emotion felt by protestors with family overseas, the emotional impact of the scene and its ability to justify her fictional past actions are not nearly as strong as the intercutting of bloody war and Ayers’ comments about his brother and his reasons for joining the underground.
If you look at the weather men and the SDS, they are really quite similar to many of the violent radical groups we have seen depicted in the other films we have watched. They started from the SDS, or Students for a Democratic Society. The SDS was one of the early American groups that represented the “new left” that was forming in many countries during the 1960s and 70s. The SDS was a group that had much influence from Martin Luther King, and thus adopted the nonviolent protest approach to revolution. However after many years of nonviolent protest the war in Vietnam continued to escalate. One member says in an interview that they viewed nonviolence, I.E. sitting back and letting your country murder millions of people, is in fact violent. This fact is reiterated many times throughout “The Weather Underground” and “the company You Keep” With this thinking, in the eyes of the Weathermen, “all Americans were guilty, at least all of the white ones” and thus “all Americans were legitimate targets for attack”. Because of this, they broke off from the SDS and took up a more violent approach to things.
ReplyDeleteIn “The Weather Underground” Sam Green & Bill Siegel use some very intense footage of the Vietnam War and of the protests against the Vietnam War and racism. This movie seems to sympathize with the Weathermen, but at the same time, it leaves room to criticize their actions. One interviewee, Todd Gitlin, believes that the Weathermen basically commandeered the student movement saying “They picked up the apparatus of the organization, and the name of the organization and they walked away with it. It was organizational piracy”. He goes on to say “I sat in horror as the Weathermen ran away with the student left”.
On the other hand, “The Company You Keep” didn’t take much of a stance on the issue, however in my opinion it seemed to highlight the idea that originally, the SDS and the Weathermen had good ideals, perhaps around the time of the Port Huron statement, and that they were fighting for the right cause, but they lost their way. This is highlighted by the bank robbery gone wrong that killed the innocent body guard. One thing I found interesting, as Daniel noted above, the two films both started with the same sequence: the news anchor informing the viewers of the charges levied against the Weathermen by a federal grand jury the charges levied against the Weathermen by a federal grand jury. This is to show the viewers what ultimately became of the SDS and the weathermen, before they take a step back and examine the journey “the movement” took from being nonviolent, to the weathermen carrying out many attacks, considered terrorism by many people.
In Herbert Marcuse's Essay 1966 Preface, he makes a claim that appears to attempt justify violence against the dominant political system: "The strange myth according to which the unsealing wound can only be healed by the weapon that afflicted the wound has not yet been validated in history: the violence which breaks the chain of violence may start a new chain...But in the balance, the general presumption is that aggressiveness in defense of life is less detrimental to the Life Instincts than aggressiveness in aggression." And later, he describes those in support of the dominant political system as "The people...on the side of that which is-not that which can and aught to be."
ReplyDeleteIn the Weather Underground documentary, there is a detailed account of an organization striving to change the world into the place it "aught to be." They attempt to do this through militancy. They struggle to violently destroy the chain of violence, in order to create a world of peace. So, with the escalation of the Vietnam war, there arose also an escalation of violence against the United States government within its own borders. As the war raged, so did the Weather Men. And as the war waned, the Weather Men did as well.
Now here is where there is some discrepancy between the documentary and the Redford film The Company You Keep. In the documentary, the Weather Underground fell apart because of national/international political trends. The collapse of their group was due to the Zeitgeist, the fall of leftist idealism, the end of the war, things bigger than the group itself. But in the Redford film, it is because of individual motivations that the group falls apart: primarily, the fact that members of the group start having children. Many times throughout the movie, the fact that some characters have children is justification for them to quit rebelling and live comfortably, prosperously, albeit underground, in the very society they wished to overthrow. When Shia Lebouf asks Sharon why she turned herself in, she responds by asking Lebouf if he has kids. At the end of the film, when Sloan and Mimi discuss their differences, Sloan says that he had to conform because he has a kid and he tries to convince Mimi, who has no kids, to turn herself in for the sake of his daughter. Apparently this is enough, and Mimi turns herself in so that the Sloan's daughter can grow up happy in the nice bourgeoisie society that she tried so desperately to escape and destroy. Apparently, children are too much of a sacrifice for the Second American Revolution.
This is also a point in which The Weather Underground and the German Red Army Faction differ. In the Baader-Meinhof group, both Ensellin and Meinhof have children. This does not deter them from their political goals. Meinhof even wishes to have her children raised in a Palestinian training camp. The RAF were far more radical than the Weather underground and were willing to sacrifice their children to a, possibly, greater good, whereas the Weather Underground were not. Violence was not worth it when you got kids to take care of. The chain of violence that the government has kept in place is allowed to go on, because apparently, parental responsibility is more important than societal responsibility. Once you got kids, you aught to accept the world that is, and forget the world that aught to be, because it’s too late.
The formation of the Students for a Democratic Society was a created during the civil right movement in 1962, but as they say in the Port Huron Statement (SDS’s manifesto of sorts, also in 1962), “Our work is guided by the sense that we may be the last generation in the experiment with living. But we are a minority—the vast majority of our people regard the temporary equilibriums of our society and world as eternally-functional parts." This call to revolution, the common idea to think differently than mass society was very important to the growth of the SDS until 1969, when the Weather Underground took over.
DeleteI also saw the association between Marcuse's philosophies and the energy/frustration that lead to the end of the SDS and the Weather Underground's declaration to ‘bring the war home’. Marcuse's Eros and Civilization (1955), where he states “The very achievements of repressive civilization seem to create the preconditions for the gradual abolition of repression.” Reading this reminded me of the Kennedy quote that MLK says in The Weather Underground (2002), "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible only make violent revolution inevitable." which is in a sense the exact reciprocal of Marcuse quote. This idea, if taken literally, can be empowering to a government, and if that government is repressive, the revolutionary. I feel that The Weather Underground does a great job of diagramming this for us, who may not know how much worse Vietnam was than Iraq (including ISIS). As Vietnam continued to get uglier and uglier, the government’s suppression of the voices who spoke against it got heavier and heavier (COINTELPRO) until violence was the repressed final expression for some kind of change.
Also really enjoyed learning about unknown civil rights leaders and revolutionaries like Fred Hampton and George Jackson, both of whom ended up being martyred by the ‘repressive society’.
Unknown civil rights leaders and revolutionaries to me
DeleteOverall, I was very disappointed in The Company You Keep, especially after viewing The Weather Underground and seeing the effects of the protests and student activism. The Company You Keep seems afraid to allow audiences to empathize with the former activists. The characters that continue to latch onto these ideals are seen as unstable, as evidenced by Sharon Solarz's performance, or simply stubborn in Mimi's case. In both cases the film suggests that the appropriate action is to simply give up and surrender to the United States, the force that so vehemently apposed them during their own protests.
ReplyDeleteThe Weather Underground gives a unique perspective on the down right cruel reactionary tactics from the United States at the time, such as the assassination of Fred Hampton. When put in this context, I was able to empathies more with their movement, given how the U.S. treated them. In some aspect this remains in the form of Terrence Howard's character as the FBI agent, but only in a declawed fashion, as if the film is afraid to actually criticize character aligned with the U.S. He is also shame that the only person of color (that I can recall) in the film which almost seems insulting given the movement's incredible diversity.
All in all, The Company You Keep is a film that's not afraid to exploit the activism of the late 1960's and 1970's, but is too frightened to actually own up to these events and forget the glitz and glam of Hollywood.
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteI couldn’t agree more with you. The Company You Keep minimized the context of students’ situation and the SDS’s call for revolution. The Weather Underground, Unlike The Company You Keep, has an in depth evaluation of the conflict between the SDS organization with the entire U.S government, not just the FBI. Excerpts from President Nixon gave me the feeling that this conflict was much bigger than I could have ever imagined. I’m quite disappointed with how the narrative of The Company You Keep is told through a journalist trying to become better at his job which unfortunately speaks better in Hollywood, not a college student 50 years later that may, or may not be excited and thrilled at the fact of a student movement. This tells me that they are indeed trying to stay away from taking any one particular side.
I really liked the Documentary’s emphasis on the evolving relationship between the SDS movement, and police. In particular, there was a comment about how much respect the FBI had gained For the SDS. Attention from the FBI ultimately led to SDS members to rethink their tactics and approach their movement with different ideology. The Company You Keep does not really take on this task. In the documentary, great detail from the archived media shows just how SDS was struggling with identity. Members were completely giving in under the pressure of being underground. When the members agreed that they didn’t like the use of violence against the public and/or innocent people, instead attacking the things that only represent such atrocities and injustice, that made me realize the ultimate goal of the group and the film.
The difference between the documentary The Weather Underground (Sam Green and Bill Siegel, 2002) and the political action thriller The Company You Keep (Robert Redford, 2012, henceforth referred to as TCYK) can be summed up in the following quote from Steven Farber in the article “Movies from Behind the Barricades”: “the absence of genuine political thought in these movies, the failure to drama-tize the full nature of involvement and protest, may have alienated many of the young people toward whom these films [films of the 1970s that purportedly center on the student revolution] are ostensibly geared.” This contrast is heightened by the fact that they open with the same news clip, as several of our classmates have also noted. The Weather Underground is focused on challenging the establishment, both in its nature as a documentary and from the viewpoint of the revolutionaries, as it presents a complex portrait of the revolutionaries as students and people in contrast to the demonizing of the former revolutionaries in TCYK.
ReplyDeleteAnother point of interest, in terms of the dissimilarities between the two related films, is the soundtrack. Instead of going the conventional route of TCYK of tense, ever-building strings and dramatic percussive hits, the documentary chooses to primarily feature Aphex Twin, the stage name of IDM (Intelligent Dance Music)/electric ambient musician Richard David James. Moreover, while the much more action-oriented Hollywood movie has no vocals on the soundtrack, there is a vocal song in The Weather Underground, and it is used to great effect because it sets the scene apart as a turning point – in the lyrics of the song, in the narration, and in the footage and photographs – in the life of the revolution and in the revolutionary students.
To return to Farber’s quotation, because TCYK is unavoidably a big budget film by a big name director/actor, starring big name actors, and following many, many, many Hollywood tropes (visually, narratively, in the dialogue, in the characterization, in the editing, in the tone, in the subplots, etc.), it seeks to dramatize the history, even to the extent of failing to give it “genuine political thought.” The Weather Underground is also not terribly adventurous narratively, but the telling of history by those involved is the key to its effectiveness, and it doesn’t de-historicize for the sake of drama. The documentary is an expression of the desire to, as the film itself states, “put trauma of previous decade behind them [the revolutionaries],” which is the source of the entire point of the film and of the recovery process of the generation it depicts.
“…it seems the reason many of us regularly turn from politics back to art is that we are still searching for an illumination of the imaginative and emotional truths that any movement necessarily ignores…”
ReplyDeleteStephen Farber weighs on the cause and purpose of rebellion films, and films of a young revolution, but in an academic light, puts Robert Redford’s The Company You Keep to shame as a film far from any revolutionary style. I found myself thinking of the Baader-Meinhof Complex, and how Edel’s intended audience was his daughter’s generation, one lost in making cheap charades of a history unknown, and wondered who was Redford’s intended audience. If to a young audience in a didactic sense, the entire historical purpose is lost, as the only background given is that Redford’s character used to run with frustrated hippies, who were involved in violent cases, and robbed a bank. But where is the passion and political drive to the actual story, as presented in The Weather Underground? If anything The Company You Keep is truly ‘behind the barricade’ hidden so well that there is hardly any trace of political purpose at all.
While a weak homage, there is no doubt that Lem Dobbs, who wrote the script, has seen the Weather Underground documentary. Perhaps the strongest moment of such a safe film lies in Sigourney Weaver’s jailed interview, speaking as a former revolutionary directly to Shia LaBeouf’s character. In a way, this is the only shed of true revolution left over from the historical events, as Weaver speaks for her generation, directly to ours. The borrowed dialogue causes a bit of a chill, as in the documentary, when asked if they would repeat history if given a second chance, the members respond with tranquility, one of the members (who responds and mentions leaving her parents) almost has a hint of sadness in her voice. Weaver’s performance seems as though its meant to scar, she delivers her lines, borrowed directly form former members with a hint of unrequited vengeance. Whether this is Redford’s take on the imprint left by his generation, or a means of gaining a dramatic flare is uncertain to me. What is certain is that Redford’s film is almost parallel to the very movement of the Weather Underground. It is deluded revolution, and in the end I tend to hear the Black Panther’s members in response to both Redford and how the Weather Underground went about their bourgeoisie uprisings, as childish and scatter-brained, unrelated to the more dire problems of the time.
Both The Weather Underground (2002) and The Company you Keep (2012) are both films relating to the student radical group of the 1970’s. That is a fact, however, after that, there is not much you can relate them to. The Weather Underground (2002) is a straightforward documentary, interviewing many members of the Weather Underground group. Using television footage, personal interviews, and constant narration, among others, Director Sam Green gains a sense of the tensions surrounding the time period and why they felt the need to protest.
ReplyDeleteThe Company you Keep (2012), however, is your typical thriller, going forward thirty years to the point where Weather Underground member Nick Sloan is discovered by the FBI and must go on the run to prove his innocence. Robert Redford have directed a really well done thrill here, but I’m afraid that is all he has because this film has little connection to the political nature of the Weather Underground, which goes into Stephen Farber point about how “the new movies themselves do not dramatize—sometimes do not even mention—the issues that have enraged students and brought them to the point of throwing rocks at cops and at buildings” (25). This film gives little detail about the Weather Underground or how and/or why the FBI is chasing Sloan, there just more intrigued about where Redford is going and will he get there. You could replace the background of the Weather Underground is anything else, and it would not have affected the plot of the film.
What I find more interesting Farber article is how he indirectly explains Redford’s directing decision by explaining that “the chief difficulties with these socially conscious youth movies is deciding whom they are designed for. Are they propaganda films made to convert older people to the student cause? Are they new mass-audience entertainments simply to exploit the fantasies and fears of the young audiences? Or can they be called works of art, created to satisfy filmmakers themselves” (30-31)? Redford made the right choice as to how to tell this story, he made a compact thriller with little to none political overtones, as we have seen with The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008) and The Choice of Hercules (2002), at some point in a film a director must decide if his/her film will please or shake the masses.
What I want to understand though, is can we live in a world where a film can be both a blockbuster thriller and a propaganda machine. Would The Company You Keep (2012) be any better if you dived more into the political notions of the Weather Underground or would it take away from the thrilliness of the film?
The Weather Underground (2002) is different than the other films that we have viewed in the class so far because of the general tone of the documentary. In particular, there was some general support for the Baader-Meinhof group in Germany at the time. In The Weather Underground (2002) however, there seems to be little to no public support of the actions of the Weathermen. While cultural differences may play a huge role in why the Baader-Meinhof group was able to have some public support and the Weatherman had very little, if any, I think a key difference in public opinion is the reason for these violent protests.
ReplyDeleteIn Germany the RAF originally set out to destroy capitalist and consumer institutions without the intentions of hurting the people. They were fighting for an ideal and hoping to inspire change in the people. They were looking for a societal change. The Weathermen were looking to bring “the war home.” They were looking to make everyone in the country, government officials and civilians alike, afraid and wanted to show them what living in a state of war was really like.
The differences in changing an ideology through attacking tenants of that ideology and causing mayhem and killing innocent people can be seen, I believe through the public support. Questioning and ideal and doing something to force other people to question it, in a way that is not physically damaging to innocent lives and killing innocent people to get what you want is as the representative from the Black Panthers said in The Weather Underground (2002), childish and misguided.
We also see public backlash in Japan as soon as URA turned violent against an innocent person, there was huge public interest, but little support. The parents of the hostage takers even committed suicide in response to their children’s’ roles in the incident.
These incidents seem to have the opposite intended effect. These groups that turn violent against innocent people of the same nation isolate themselves and if anything, make people rely on the government more in order to protect them. The violent groups are pushing people away from their cause and into the arms of who they would see as the enemy.
A theme that both The Company You Keep (2012) and The Weather Underground (2002) is the question of regret . This question not only observes the revolutionaries of the present, but also the problems of the past. To act so violently and so drastically in response to the world in which they were living brings to question the nature of that world and its happenings. If The Weathermen was willing to act so violently in response to America's current events and, more importantly, boldly state years later as functioning, grown humans that they have no regrets, it makes one wonder about the possible justification of their actions as young adults.
ReplyDeleteI argue that while The Weather Underground does a fairly good job of attempting to remain un-bias, I argue that if it does take a side, the sides being on that of the Weather Underground or those they're attacking, the film takes the side of the former. I argue this by observing the form of the film. The Weather Underground does a marvelous job of unapologetically portraying the brutal events of the time period. It does not sugar coat the Vietnam war and its bloody, horrific images, the violent racism in America or the infuriating passivism of the country's leaders.
Even the shots that were probably filmed during the making of the documentary used to represent the time period are nauseating. There is a shot of waves crashing on the beach as the narrator speaks over it about the state of the nation. When the shot of the waves ends, there is a flash and the scene repeats. Opposed to the usual calming effect of the ocean, this scene is fairly disturbing like a series of gross images played over and over in a haunted house. Similarly the reenactment of the planting of the bomb is filmed in a shaky, disturbing manner that has a very horror-film like style to it. The darkness of the time is quite evident.
While the film takes a stance on the severely immoral issues of the time period, it seems to be less confident on its view of the way the revolutionaries chose to act. It also seems to sympathize with the revolutionists in a similar way that The Company You Keep does though. The characters look back on the time with no regret on their ideas, but slight regret on how they were carried out. I sympathized greatly with the characters and their morals. They wanted to change society and, unlike many of the other wealthy, white hippies of the time period, they wanted to do it alongside others who suffered far more than they did. This really was revolutionary.
But the film doesn't give an answer to their violence. I was left confused about how I felt about their tactics. However, I think the film as well as the revolutionaries are confused about it as well. One of the characters looks back on the time and compares their bombings to present day terrorists and makes the point that today's terrorists obviously think they're doing something to better the world too. He then contemplates out loud the possibility that he as a Weathermen member may have been wrong too. The Underground Weathermen states its disgust for the nation's actions and its sympathy yet confusion for the weathermen and their actions.
An interesting string of thought that I have observed in all of the materials that we've studied thus far about the 68 movement in America is that of an admitted lacking political vision. In the Farber article he spends the majority of the article discussing film being made during this time and the relationship of politics and representing art in films, but he also makes a point of stating the apparent "political simplicity" of films during this era. Farber states, “I believe the absence of genuine political thought in these movies, the failure to dramatize the full nature of involvement and protest, may have alienated many of the young people toward whom these movies are obsessively geared.” While this may very well be true, I feel that In both of the at home documentaries as well as in The Company You Keep, there is a shared feeling of lack in plan or specific vision, that the Weather underground as well as over revolutionary groups, for what would constitute for the desired “revolution” that everyone was so desperately after. As stated in Berkley in The 60’s the student free speech movement was an important seed to what would grow in to the civil rights movement but even at the origins of this time of revolution it was described by some interviewees as having been motivated by a sort of “sand box politics.” The Weather underground documentary, even reveals some of the involved revolutionaries admitting that at points they were unsure of their final goal, that they felt everything that sought after may not have been as thought out as it could have been.
ReplyDeleteWhile most of these revolutionaries agreed that there needed to be an opposition to how the government was treating the rest of the world, and in The Company You Keep a main point driven home in the interviews that was conducted of the people involved in the Detroit bombing, was that the government needed to know that what they were doing was wrong, that being passive would be perpetuating that violence, but I felt that all angles of studying this time in America failed to clearly illustrate the revolution that needed to be seen. I feel these views failed to inform us what would the ideal America look like, sure the attention of the government was captured, but now what?
"The ending is the conceit" A favorite phrase of mine, essentially the ending carries the meaning of the movie, and so it is for The Weather Underground (2002). The film examines the nature of past choices. This is underscored by Mark Rudd's final words on his own struggle to find justification for the actions of The Weather Underground.
ReplyDeleteThe first significant choice that The Weather Underground(2002) makes is that it take its time painting a picture of the cultural, societal, and political landscape before getting to the escalation of the Weather Underground movement. The use of incendiary images of victims of the Vietnam War and targets of oppression from the government put the audience in an emotional state that lends itself to sympathize with the violent actions of the Weather Underground. This choice then feeds into the next choice to have all of the subjects look directly into the camera. This creates a more intimate relationship with the audience and after having the film go out of its way to show the ugliness of the actions of the US government, it becomes easy to follow what these members of the Weather Underground have to say. However, it is important to note that the film doesn't discriminate with which subjects make eye contact with the camera, and it is the inclusion of Brian Flanagan and Todd Gitlin that begin to cloud the conviction the audience may have in the actions of the Weather Underground. This sense of uncertainty builds slowly until the films final moments in which Mark Rudd questions what he did was right. So far in our class, this notion of uncertainty has been unique to American cinema.
One thing that I found curious was how both films exist in a post 9/11 US and seem to challenge the revolutionary attitude. Neither film makes much acknowledgement of this, but the fact that both films seem to question the subject's past choices is strikingly different from many of the other films we have seen in this class. Films like Something in the Air (2012) and Baader Meinhof Complex are unapologetic in their depiction of revolutionary attitude and action, but the themes present in The Company You Keep(2012) and The Weather Underground (2002) aren't so. It makes me wonder if 9/11 has been what has led to this lingering sense of regret with regards to revolutionary action in the US.