"That's a nice-a donut."

Monday, December 05, 2005

Guerilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst (2004)

One of the more bizarre and surreal events of the 1970s was the infamous kidnapping of rich heiress Patty Hearst by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). From producer and director Robert Stone, Guerilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst takes us back to that volatile time, when for a good part of the Winter and Spring of 1974 a nation was captivated to the story.

If you're not familiar with the story, basically the SLA was a group of people that had become disenfranchised with the U.S. during the fateful 1960s, perhaps culminating with the Kent State disaster in 1970. Initially they were a group with utopian Socialistic dreams (they're tagline was "Death to the Fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people!"), but things soon spiraled out of control once a police officer was murdered. And set against the turbulent backdrop of mid-1970s California, where bombings were a regular occurrence, the group soon kidnapped the granddaughter of legendary newspaperman William Randolph Hearst. The reasons were ostensibly to force Patty's father, Randolph Hearst to provide a large sum of money in order to feed the poor and starving people in the state. In fact, along these lines, Guerilla makes many explicit references to the concept of Robin Hood (i.e., stealing from the rich to give to the poor). It even includes numerous footage of both the classic Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn, and the Disney animated feature Robin Hood.

Though a manhunt was underway, and the FBI was heavily involved with the case, weeks later Patty still hadn't been found. The only good news was that the SLA released tapes to the media, demanding things as well as an increasingly cryptic series of messages from Patty. And sure enough, eventually a message is released saying that she had joined the group! To rip out the hearts of her wealthy family even further, she is soon caught on videotape in an infamous bank robbery, using the nickname of "Tania." Debate rages as to whether she was brainwashed, or whether she was a willing accomplice.

In addition to archival news footage, much of the story is derived from interviews with two former SLA members. The movie does a thorough job of covering the beginnings of the SLA, as well as the first month or so of the Hearst kidnapping. After that, perhaps in parallel to the media attention, there are much larger gaps in the coverage. First we start to move up and get updated on the story a couple weeks at a time, up until the first bank robbery. Then eventually we move forward nearly a whole year. What were the heiress and her new friends doing this whole time? How close were the authorities to finding them?

We get few answers on that. And virtually no insights into how and why Hearst joined the SLA, other than a cursory mention that she had fallen in love with "Cujo," one of the group members, and a one sentence mention of the Stockholm Syndrome. Obviously director Stone wasn't privy to what went on inside SLA's hideouts, but surely some conjecture and heresy would have been welcome. Unsurprisingly, there is no input from Hearst herself. There is, though, somewhat of a nice contrast at the end of the film, showing the fates of Hearst versus some of the surviving SLA members. By the way, this isn't mentioned in the movie, but Hearst's defense attorney was F. Lee Bailey, who you might recognize as one of the members of O.J. Simpson's Dream Team.

The Verdict: C+.

Michael Bentley 7:49 AM

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