Punishment Park

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Punishment Park

December 17th 2007 22:07

“Punishment Park takes place tomorrow, yesterday, or five years from now. It is also happening today.” This statement is from the original 1971 press kit. Directed by UK filmmaker Peter Watkins who made the controversial docudrama The War Game (1965) about the effects of a nuclear attack and its aftermath, Punishment Park is an incendiary indictment about the cause and effect of repression and violence set in the Californian desert.

The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1971, but has never been released in America. In fact, it never received proper theatrical distribution until 1980 where it played in West Germany. It was then re-released two years ago and played in the United Kingdom and France.

Corrective Group 638 on their way to the dentention camp

I remember first seeing stills from the film in the once exceptional movie magazine Films & Filming, an early 70s issue, when I was an adolescent, and found then deeply provocative and profoundly chilling; stark images of enforcement officers gunning down defenceless political prisoners in the searing Mojave Desert heat shot in grainy, hazy 16mm.

Mark Keats as judicial head William Hoeger

Finally I get to see the film, as it has been released on DVD through the Accent Underground label. And it is as powerful now as it probably was back in 1971; in fact, in many respects it is even more provocative, especially in the current socio-political climate of the post-9/11 war on terror and the age of reality television.

Corrective Group 638 face the tribunal

Punishment Park was made on a shoe-string budget (about $US65, ooo, but closer to one hundred grand after soundtrack and 35mm blow-up) using mostly non-actors and amateurs, and in parts of the film this is evident in the performances (one actor appears to be reading her lines from notes on the floor), but for the most part the performances are convincing. But more memorable and exciting is the heat-seeking camera work, a handheld Arriflex 16mm, operated by Joan Churchill who captures the barren and hostile landscape with arid and poetic abandon.

Meanwhile Corrective Group 637 are being pursued in Punishment Park

The film is broken into two halves which fold over each other in a split chronology. There is the tribunal taking place at the edge of Bear Mountain National Punishment Park in a stifling windowless tent, and the pursuit of a small group of pacifists and political activists by several sheriffs, police and members of the National Guard. Peter Watkins worked without a screenplay, instead allowing the performers to concoct their own backgrounds and “defense” tactics, and with only scenarios in place let situations unfold within their own terms.

An exhausted member of Corrective Group 637

This meant that at one point near the end of the film in a dramatic stand-off between Guardsmen and the defendants (Corrective Group 637) one of the gunmen got hit with a rock and in a knee jerk reaction he dropped to his knee and opened fire. Two of the pacifists instantly improvised their own deaths, and director Watkins momentarily panicked thinking live ammunition had inexplicably found its way into a carbine and a terrible accident had just occurred. As it turned out the exclamation Watkins makes of “Oh God! Oh God! Cut! Cut! Cut the camera!” was later used in the finished cut (Watkins was providing the off-screen voiceover of the contrived English film team documenting the detention camp exercise, and was also co-editor).

Jim Bowan as arrogant Sheriff Edwards

At the tribunal the defendants (men and women in their early to late 20s) are convicted of “conspiracy” charges (guilt is already assumed) and have to choose between Punishment Park or a full penal sentence (many years imprisonment). Punishment Park is a three-day ordeal where the offenders must traverse more than fifty miles of desert and mountainous scrubland without water to reach an American flag and avoid capture by the pursuing armed police force who have a two-hour handicap. This barbaric form of punitive deterrent is seen as a necessary training for the enforcement officers by the administration, and if the defendants complete the ordeal without capture, they will have fulfilled their obligations.

A member of Corrective Group 637 resists capture

Pull the other one. Punishment Park vividly depicts and illustrates the severe stresses reaction against authority and possible insurrection, which face contemporary society throughout the world, pushing people towards fear and intolerance - even violence and repression – as being the only way of dealing and handling these inherent problems. The film acted like a form of psycho-drama for both director and participants, with the experimentation in improvisation providing a palpable sense of realism.

The symbol of hope and freedom for those running in Punishment Park

One member of the tribunal states that there should have been “more spank and less Spock in America” referring to the famous juvenile psychologist Dr. Spock. This summed up much of the film’s juxtaposed ideals in a single, albeit blackly humourous, line of dialogue.

Punishment Park is frank and uncompromising; exceptional filmmaking that paints a dark and subversive cinematic portrait of social radicalism, a horror movie of its time and for our times.

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