Peter Watkins | Through the Shattered Lens

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMbiBPK87f4

The 1971 “pseudo-documentary”, Punishment Park, imagines an alternative America that still feels very familiar.

With America paralyzed by continuing protests against racism, economic inequality, and the war in Viet Nam, President Richard Nixon declares a state of emergency and invokes the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950. The law (which is a real law and still on the books, by the way) allows the federal government to detain anyone who is deemed a risk to national security. Anti-government activists are rounded up and put on trial before “community tribunals,” which are made up of a combination of military officers, politicians, businessmen, and housewives. Though the arrested are given a chance to defend themselves against the charges, there’s never any doubt that each trial will end with a conviction. Those convicted are given two options. They can either serve their entire sentence in federal prison. Or they can spend three days in Punishment Park.

Most of them make the mistake of picking Punishment Park.

What is Punishment Park? It’s 53 miles of California desert. Detainees have got three days to cross the desert, without food or water. If they make it to the American flag at the end of Punishment Park, they will be given their freedom. However, along with having to deal with the extreme heat, the detainees are also going to be pursued by a group of police officers and National Guardsmen. If the detainees are caught before reaching the flag, they’ll be sent to prison. The detainees are given a head start but it soon becomes apparent that the head start doesn’t count much for much when you’re in the desert without water. It also becomes apparent that Punishment Park is much more about revenge and reminding people of their place than it is about justice. The rules of Punishment Park only apply to the detainees.

As he did with the majority of his films (including the Oscar-winning The War Game), director Peter Watkins presents the film as being a documentary. Though they’re never seen onscreen, we hear the voices of the British and German film crews asking questions to both the detainees and the people pursuing them. (We also occasionally hear them protesting the brutality of what they’re witnessing, though the cops and soldiers are quick to point out that they really don’t care what a bunch of Europeans thinks about their actions.) The film cuts back and forth from one group being chased through Punishment Park and another group being put on trial and eventually convicted. Watkins cast the film with amateur actors, with the detainees being played by actual anti-war activists while many of the people pursuing them were played by actual guardsmen and police officers. Watkins has subsequently started that the attitudes and the hostilities of the people in the film were mirrored off-screen by those playing them as well. Much like the Stanford Prison Experiment, every one was more than willing to play their roles. It brings a much-needed authenticity to the film’s alternative history. (Interestingly enough, it also leads to several of the detainees coming across as being a bit annoying, as people who are convinced of their own righteousness tend to be. The important thing is that they’re authentically annoying. Even 50 years after the film was shot, both camps are full of people who still seem familiar.) Ironically, the film’s biggest weakness is that everyone seems to be so genuinely worried about whether or not they’ll survive the trek through the desert that it’s difficult to believe that they would actually stop moving so they could have a conversation with the documentary crew.

Still, whatever flaws the film may have, Punishment Park feels sickeningly plausible. In our current era of rising authoritarianism, militarization, reckless accusations of treason, and cries to set aside the Constitution so that “enemies” can be stripped of their rights, Punishment Park continues to feel frighteningly relevant today.

“Do you know what Strontium-90 is and what it does?”

That question is asked as part of a man-on-the-street interview in The War Game. Despite a pledge by the Home Office to educate the British public on the possible effects of atomic war and nuclear fallout, the man being asked has no idea what Strontium-90 is. For that matter, I have no idea what Strontium-19 is. The War Game makes a good case that the only way anyone will ever understand that true horror of atomic conflict is to live through it but, by the point that we have no choice but to know what Strontium-90 is and what it does, it will be too late.

Clocking in at a brisk 50 minutes, The War Game is set up like documentary, though the majority of the film is staged. (That did not stop The War Game from winning an Oscar for best documentary feature.) Made at the height of the Cold War, The War Game suggested that not only was Britain not prepared for a possible nuclear attack but that the attack itself would be so devastating that was literally no way that it ever could be prepared. Opening with interviews with typical Britons expressing both their ignorance about the longterm effects of an atomic war, The War Game proceeds to visualize what would actually happen if the UK ever did find itself attacked. When the bomb falls, most people are nowhere near a shelter. (“Within this car,” the narrator says, “a family is buring alive.”) Even for those who get to safety, it turns out that there is no shelter strong enough to protect its inhabitants from both physical and psychological damage. The film ends with chilling scenes of London bobbies executing looters and British children saying that they never want to grow up.

The War Game was originally made for the BBC, which deemed the program to be to “upsetting,” refused to air it, and subsequently tried to bury it. This attempt at censorship had the opposite effect, earning The War Game a theatrical release and exposing it to an even larger audience than would have seen it originally. However, it would be another 20 years before the BBC allowed The War Game to air on television. Though, especially for media-savvy viewers, the staged nature of this “documentary” is sometimes too obvious, The War Game is still a powerful and bleakly disturbing vision of an all-too possible future.