Back in the mid-1960s, Peter Watkins’ work at the BBC had earned him a reputation as a documentarian who was not afraid of innovation. For example, his 1965 film Culloden won a BAFTA for its portrayal the 1746 Jacobite uprising in the style of a piece of Vietnam War reporting. In 1966, Watkins’ follow-up project The War Game won an Academy Award for its documentary-style account of the events surrounding a fictional nuclear war. Based on these critical triumphs, Watkins left the BBC and travelled to America in order to make a trilogy of films on America’s foundational wars. However, while this project never came to fruition, Watkins’ observations on the political climate of mid-1960s America eventually took the form of Punishment Park, a fictionalised documentary set at the heart of the American establishment’s dystopian attempts to restore order to their fragmenting society.
The ‘Big Bear Punishment Park’ was set up in order to help America address its rising tide of subversion without having to incur the expense of building more prisons and running more courts. Radicals and dissidents are arrested on the slimmest of pretences and shipped to a desert compound where they are summarily tried by an extra-legal body staffed by members of the establishment. After arguing with the defendants, these pillars of the community sentence them to lengthy prison sentences but offer them the opportunity to escape punishment by taking part in a training exercise where they are hunted across a desert by heavily armed law enforcement officers. Needless to say, these hunts are both utterly one-sided and unrelentingly brutal.
On one level, Punishment Park functions as a near-future work of dystopian science fiction. If looked at in these terms, the exaggeration of the establishment’s reaction to political dissent is only a matter of degree and the exaggeration serves to highlight real problems in American political culture. Similarly, the dissidents’ futile march through a desert towards an American flag stands as a poignant metaphorical commentary on Humanity’s quest for freedom and how the value of freedom can be all too easily undermined by the very people entrusted with securing our attempts to achieve it.
On another level, Punishment Park is a furious attack not only upon the politically intransigent elites that run America but also upon the biased nature of so-called reporting and the intellectually incoherent and simple-minded nature of responses to those elites. Indeed, one of the reasons why Punishment Park is such an under-appreciated film is because, unlike Hopper’s Easy Rider (1969) or Lumet’s Network (1976), there are no romantic figures to root for. Watkins reportedly shot the courtroom scenes by briefing his actors and allowing them to present their own arguments and what emerges from that process is the fact that neither side of this polarised debate is really all that interested in what the other side has to say. When the dissidents score a hit, the establishment has them gagged. When the establishment points out hypocrisy or inconsistency, the dissidents respond by screaming insults. What emerges is an astonishingly bleak and sour account of the absolute hopelessness of existence and the absolute futility of political engagement. As one dissident pointedly remarks, the pigs are coming for you anyway so the only choice available to you is whether or not you resort to violence once they start shooting at you.
Even after forty years, Punishment Park remains a difficult film to watch. The bleakness of Watkins’ vision is very nearly over-powering and his laudable attempts to hint at the humanity behind the visors and mirrored shades of the law-enforcement officers only serves to drive home the message that we, as a society, are completely and utterly doomed.
Included on this Blu-ray edition of the film is a terrifyingly intense essay delivered by Watkins straight to camera. In this essay, Watkins explains how critics at the time described Punishment Park as a kind the masochistic fantasy of a wannabe martyr. Given that Watkins made this film at a time when radical politics still offered a reasonable alternative to the status quo, this accusation seems fair comment. However, forty years down the line, we can now see that Watkins was absolutely right to predict both an assault on civil liberties and an increasing balkanisation of the political sphere. Look at the way that potential terrorists are treated and you will know that Watkins was right. Look at the way that left-wing and right-wing media seldom engage with each other and you will know that Watkins was right. Look at the left’s complete lack of response to the credit crunch and you will know that Watkins was right. Punishment Park is a beautifully made and endlessly intelligent film but it is not an enjoyable watch, sometimes the truth really is no fun at all.
