Hard to separate the film from the content here. I thought the mix of various footage and talking heads worked well. (Although one image, used at least twice crossing a street in the 70's left me perplexed...unless it was footage from one of the Weather(wo)men???)
The use of sound was deft too, never milking an emotion nor stealing a scene. Speaking of items stolen, oustered SDS leader Todd Gitlin, and his take on the happenings was interesting to me. Others on this review board talk about this being a take on history from the loser's point of view, but then he is the one who lost to those losers.
I don't see the Weathermen as losers, but certainly as marginalized folks. Whether by their own in-fighting, by the end of the Vietnam war, by the temptation of time passing, children being born and a general rise in the status of one's status quo. Or perhaps by CointelPro.
I'm not sure what is the most amazing aspect of CointelPro, its insidiousness or its effectiveness. I thought the filmmakers went pretty easy on this...but then again, maybe they felt it was a confluence of factors that helped to quell the Weather.
Still one can imagine that the levels of CointelPro now are so advanced and complicated, that it would be hard to unravel that from the actual DNA of any "revolutionary" going today. Indeed one can assume that CointelPro junior likely generates its own revolutionaries, and counterrevolutionaries and countercounter to the nth... Like some sort of runaway computer program.
Anyways...
I do think the film is a worthwhile watch, although chances are you can easily predict your response from just reading some of the reviews posted here. I will always admire the left's largest weakness...that it can doubt itself. If the film doesn't provoke questions in you, it will at least provoke responses (and hopefully not ready-made ones).
Some of my questions...
1) Is there a difference in violence against corporations versus violence against humans?
2) Does anyone else beside the sons/daughters of the elite have time to think about the "revolution?"
3) What exactly was so great about Timothy Leary? And did he get productized into Zoloft? Or whatever is the latest offensive attack missile into the Drug War? Leary didn't have quite the funding that today's corporate cartels have, but it sounds like he sure did have $ome.
Well that's just my own ongoing boredom/irritation with legal and illegal drugs. Of these three, the most important is the first.
I'm surely no supporter today of the ELF, but one device in the film, of painting action-reponse pictures of the Weatherbombing made violence seem nearly rational. Although nowhere near as methodical as shots of airplanes and their almost pretty dropping of death.
I thought Mark Rudd's comment that all violence is perceived as either criminal and/or insane may not be far off the mark. He talked about this as one way that the Weather was blown over rather than up. But as I get older, it does seem that non-violence is the ONLY way.
Of course, I have my doubts....
6/10
The use of sound was deft too, never milking an emotion nor stealing a scene. Speaking of items stolen, oustered SDS leader Todd Gitlin, and his take on the happenings was interesting to me. Others on this review board talk about this being a take on history from the loser's point of view, but then he is the one who lost to those losers.
I don't see the Weathermen as losers, but certainly as marginalized folks. Whether by their own in-fighting, by the end of the Vietnam war, by the temptation of time passing, children being born and a general rise in the status of one's status quo. Or perhaps by CointelPro.
I'm not sure what is the most amazing aspect of CointelPro, its insidiousness or its effectiveness. I thought the filmmakers went pretty easy on this...but then again, maybe they felt it was a confluence of factors that helped to quell the Weather.
Still one can imagine that the levels of CointelPro now are so advanced and complicated, that it would be hard to unravel that from the actual DNA of any "revolutionary" going today. Indeed one can assume that CointelPro junior likely generates its own revolutionaries, and counterrevolutionaries and countercounter to the nth... Like some sort of runaway computer program.
Anyways...
I do think the film is a worthwhile watch, although chances are you can easily predict your response from just reading some of the reviews posted here. I will always admire the left's largest weakness...that it can doubt itself. If the film doesn't provoke questions in you, it will at least provoke responses (and hopefully not ready-made ones).
Some of my questions...
1) Is there a difference in violence against corporations versus violence against humans?
2) Does anyone else beside the sons/daughters of the elite have time to think about the "revolution?"
3) What exactly was so great about Timothy Leary? And did he get productized into Zoloft? Or whatever is the latest offensive attack missile into the Drug War? Leary didn't have quite the funding that today's corporate cartels have, but it sounds like he sure did have $ome.
Well that's just my own ongoing boredom/irritation with legal and illegal drugs. Of these three, the most important is the first.
I'm surely no supporter today of the ELF, but one device in the film, of painting action-reponse pictures of the Weatherbombing made violence seem nearly rational. Although nowhere near as methodical as shots of airplanes and their almost pretty dropping of death.
I thought Mark Rudd's comment that all violence is perceived as either criminal and/or insane may not be far off the mark. He talked about this as one way that the Weather was blown over rather than up. But as I get older, it does seem that non-violence is the ONLY way.
Of course, I have my doubts....
6/10