The Weather Underground

The people in the film made many astute points. Rudd points out toward the end that violence is seen by the public as mental illness or some other chaos unless perpetrated by the government--in that case, violence is normal. I'm glad the Weathermen existed. How flat and hopeless the history of activism would be today without them. It seems that nowadays there is a stereotype of the college leftist activist as being a weak member of a highly privileged class who simply feels guilty about the privilege but is ultimately all talk--wants to keep his wealth in the end. The Weathermen defy this stereotype, putting themselves in full danger of losing everything and accomplishing incredible strategic feats against the government like freeing Timothy Leary and bombing government buildings. I suspect that such a defiance of stereotype is why I, who am college educated and a leftist activist type, never knew the names of the Weathermen, while I knew the names of the most prominent Black Panthers, like Eldridge Cleaver and Bobby Seale. It is a movement almost entirely ignored, even by leftist academics. As the film wraps up, one thing that is telling is that none of the featured Weathermen sold out and became capitalists like so many members of SDS. They're all currently doing things for the good of society even if they're no longer bombing buildings. Also, we learn from the film that people didn't simply lose interest in the left and anti-war/anti-capitalist activism, preferring to embrace the glorious consumerism of Reagan's America. The government beat it out of people. Particularly, the government killed the Weathermen's effectiveness when they forced them underground. Maybe the reason we don't have mass uprisings in the U.S. as in other countries is because our government is the most effectively repressive, it being the most powerful in the world.

A "fair, unbiased documentary" that glorifies the 60s/70s terrorist movement, when white liberal criminally insane psychopaths tried to team up with Black Panther's criminal insane psychopaths in order to bring about a more fertile ground for a Red Revolution to take place. And who do you think they wanted to lead this new Red America devoid of democracy, freedom, intelligence and toilet-paper? Well, they themselves, naturally!

The Left's notorious, continual defense of terrorist activities (provided they are/were carried out by Islamic extremists and left-wing elements) goes hand-in-hand with the Marxist notion of a (very) violent revolution.

Far from liberals being the "pacifistic anti-war" lovey-dovey peaceniks they tried to portray themselves as to the increasingly gullible American public, they are in fact ready to support the most extreme types of violence and aggression, as long as that behaviour is in line with their own sick ideology. Hence why Hitler committed genocide, whereas Stalin committed "what was necessary for the Revolution".

It's incredibly rare to see media depict the real root causes behind acts of "terrorism" during today's War On Terror. While Weather Underground does not glorify its subjects behavior, it does create empathy on the part of the viewer... and that alone is revolutionary at this historical point in time. The Weather Underground portrays a time in America's past when the populace was activated in a way that makes today's peace movement look like armchair intellectuals. Is it really just a draft that determines how aggressive our anti-war stance will be? That is pretty sad, since, if that is true, the anti-war movement isn't actually anti-war at all, it's just anti having to fight in a war. This is a documentary about a group of activists who made a true sacrifice, giving up their own freedom to try and stop a war.

The Weatherman faction remains one of the more troubling aspects of the 60s counterculture, for manifold reasons. How did a bunch of well-educated, relatively privileged white kids transform from idealistic protesters for peace into revolutionary terrorists? How were they able to reconcile the inherent contradiction of using violence as a means of pursuing peace? Can violence ever lead to reconciliation, or must it necessarily beget more violence? Sam Green and Bill Siegel's documentary examines all of these questions while remaining remarkably objective. It's a pity that we should feel surprised when a documentary filmmaker actually attempts to uphold the all-but-obsolete standard of objectivity; nevertheless, Green and Siegel deserve to be complimented for presenting a film that is perhaps more a window into the confusion of the times than a history of one peculiar faction of anti-government activists.

Green & Siegel intersperse archival footage with commentary by a number of the Weather Underground's leaders, most of whom retain their revolutionary idealism, even if they have grown circumspect about their methodology.

The film persuasively channels the aura of violence and political unrest that characterized American culture as the first vestiges of counter-cultural idealism gave way first to frustration as the war in Vietnam escalated and then to radicalism as, one after another, civil and human rights activists ranging from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton were brutally silenced, possibly by order of American government agencies such as the CIA, NSA, and FBI. Simultaneously, the tenor of apolitical American life shifted from the good vibrations of psychedelia to paranoia and suspicion. The image of the blissed-out, peace-loving, groovy hippie was replaced by the crazed expression of Charles Manson, whose murderous id made every God-fearing citizen's worst nightmares reality: acid-crazed hippies rampaging the suburbs, butchering innocents in order to start a revolution that would overthrow the status quo. Siegel's and Green's direction employs numerous archival clips that are shockingly graphic, including horrific footage of executions and the bodies of civilian casualties in Vietnam (including many women and small children) and uncensored crime scene photographs from the Tate-LaBianca murders ordered by Charles Manson. The material is somewhat objectionable, but serves the purpose of expressing the climate of fear that made it possible for the likes of Mark Rudd--now a quiet, somewhat melancholy math teacher at a community college in New Mexico--to drop out of sight and begin plotting the violent overthrow of the American political system.

The film presents the Weather Underground as admirable in its courage and determination, but also as terminally misguided. Weatherman leaders repeatedly express their solidarity with the Black Panthers and any revolutionary movement of underclass 'brown or black' people on the planet, but the few Panthers who comment for the film either disavow the Weathermen or express perplexity at their determination to identify with the struggle of blacks and other oppressed ethnicities. As adults, several of the group members acknowledge that, even when they were harassed or beaten by police, they were still treated far more humanely than their black counterparts, and so were never truly in the same struggle as those whom they supported. Some of the members still speak nostalgically about their Weathermen days and claim that they'd do it all over again; others express disdain and regret over their complicity in the deaths of innocents.

As we begin to see history repeating itself in Iraq, 'The Weather Underground' is all too timely. What was different about the 60s and 70s, when so many young people became committed to political activism, from the present, when the numbers are relatively few? Will the process that brought about the Weather Underground repeat itself, or was this particular group less a consequence of the times than of the choices of a few charismatic but misguided and naive twenty-somethings? Did Weatherman make a difference, or was it simply another small piece of the catastrophic collage of the Vietnam era? This film raises more questions than it answers--which is probably what art should always try to do.

A friend of mine wrote:

"I have a very sparse knowledge of (The Weather Underground's) particular historical context. My interest here is more in terms of how the film was put together, what the archival footage and interviews with former Weathermen members NOW reveals to us about their sentiments, their motivations, their actions."

My sentiments exactly. Like the above well put thought piece, I foresee others more eloquent than myself will lavish raves (or rants) on The Weather Underground. Love it or hate it, you decide. That said, I shall post here, my expanded take.

There is an incredibly balanced portrayal of these people in The Weather Underground. Though objectivity is arguably frown upon in documentaries, this film worked for me. For it allowed me to understand the information presented (Yes, I am just as ignorant about 60s/70s American history) and it helped me in making my own conclusion.

This documentary shed interesting light on its subjects. The Weathermen failed in their radical movement. However turbulent that time and place might have been, the corresponding violence initiated by this splinter group did not contribute as much to the winding down of the Vietnam War, as did the natural progression of other events. Ironically, the continual pacifistic action from "the rest" arguably effected more of a shift in that period's socio politics (albeit gradually) than these radicals could ever accomplish.

One telling line from Mark Rudd, one of the movement's members said:

"I cherished my hate as a badge of moral superiority"

Therein lies the danger.

When smart, idealistic (more often than not, good intentioned as well) individuals share this belief that they stand on a higher moral ground, that they have a greater, grander purpose in their "calling", they'd willingly go to any lengths in pursuit of their causes. As a result, as one other interviewee put it, extreme violent actions would be considered. Ordinary human lives would ultimately become dispensable. Ergo, the seeds for terrorism has been planted. Mass Murderers are borne out of this ideological conceit.

This cinematic thesis also suggested the generalised "hippie" movement of the 60's/ 70's slapped the faces of the Left real hard. It torn apart the fabric of the nation. Its unachieveable idealism when intermingled with the "violent" dynamics of that turbulent period (Vietnam, Drugs, Hedonism, Multiple Assassinations of Cult of Personalities, Watergate etc) brought about disenchantment and despair. As a result, the pendulum swung and many people ran towards the Right for comfort, denial, escapism and a combination of these mixed feelings.... It gave us Olivia Newton John, Rambo, Ronald Reagan and Jane Fonda - The 80's (yikes).

I am actually quite glad the film ended on an optimistic note. These arguably misguided Weathermen brought with them enormous personal baggages all these years. Yet throughout this film, they were candid about their ideology and reflective about their frailties. Contrary to our natural expectations, these "failures" did not become jaded human beings. They moved on from this checkered past. They continued living their lives. One of them even won Jeopardy (Don't ask).

All in, their humanity shone through.

The Weathermen fought Da Man, and lost. Their strategies might not have been better thought out. Their continuous radical activities might have played into the hands of sophisticated government spin doctors. They might have lost steam due to gradually realising their movement's futility. Yes, their follies were explored abundantly in this movie. But their thoughts and actions were guided by the confusion of those turbulent times (however ironic this last sentence might have sounded). All in, their hearts were in the right place.

On the other hand, if we look beyond the talking heads and read between the lines, we would realise that the questions raised in The Weather Underground are just as relevant today. About 50000 American Soldiers died in the Vietnam War, millions more Vietnamese perished. Who holds more destructive powers? The Weathermen or their "enemy"? Who then were the mass murderers? Look at Iraq today, Afghanistan the day before and Bosnia before that.

Who then are the mass murderers?

In closing, I guess all should know that History is written by the victors. This cinematic document about the "losers" is hence IMO, a most important piece of work. It demands a wider audience and need be accorded higher archival priority than something as insidiously engineered and time wasting as The Fog of War.

For we have much more to learn from this Oscar losing flick.