Punishment Park

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C     Extras: B     Film: B+

 

 

Peter Watkins is one of the greatest British filmmakers of all time, but so many of his works have been ignored and even censored on purpose that you have likely not had the chance to see his work.  Originally a director of shorts and TV work, his TV project The War Game was censored by the British Government because it was too honest like Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1965) about the truth of the un- survivability of a nuclear conflict.  It won the Oscar® Best Documentary the next year when it received a theatrical release.  After his amazing Political Rock Music and Science Fiction film Privilege (1967), he launched the “sports-and-games-as-death” cycle in Science Fiction (knowingly or not) with Gladiatorena (1969, ironically also known as Peace Game) that even had early cinematography work by David Cronenberg collaborator Peter Suschitzky.  His next film, Punishment Park (1971) is possibly the most censored film in The United States after the 1953 classic Salt Of The Earth.

 

Coming out the same year as Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, Watkins film would be Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960) as Kubrick’s would be to Hitchcock’s original Psycho the same year.  Watkins would not make another theatrical feature film for eight years, though it was worse for Powell.  In Punishment Park, the U.S. Government has continued it campaign in Vietnam against “communism” as it becomes more powerfully an imperialistic presidential superstate and asserts more fascistically “acceptable” modes of behavior in going after whom they perceive as dissonants.  Just for asserting protest rights, you can now go to jail without trial and worse.  The “alternative” is the title area, where you are hunted down by domestic soldiers in training under harsh conditions where you might survive.  The hunters have real rifles and obviously, it is a scam.

 

Done in the classical documentary style (complete with a great voice over) throughout, the film may have some visual trappings of the anti-war politics of the time, from Kent State to the 1968 Chicago trials, but much of it is suddenly and shockingly more relevant than ever.  Just replace the “communists” with the new enemies of the Right like “liberals” and “terrorists” (like yelling “Fire!”) and it is as if Goldwater won the election and Nixon never had to resign.  Nixon was in power when the film was shot, though we should never forget that Lyndon B. Johnson was a “Cold War Liberal” and the film distributes equal blame all around.

 

The immorality of the training soldiers echoes the dark side of the Vietnam fiasco as much as our failure snow to stop 9/11 and take a suspiciously lengthy amount of time to go after the Islamo-terrorists.  On the flipside, when soldiers die in this film, it reminds us of how they are not given the best equipment and are expendable, like a lack of body armor.  Though a brilliant work of fiction, a far superior recreation of documentary work so above “reality TV” that the comparison is a sick joke and features a superior combination of writing, acting and directing, it is riveting and compelling throughout.  It even takes on the feel of a great Science Fiction film an d darker side of that “death sport cycle’, a genre and subgenre Watkins is a genius at working in.  Punishment Park is a classic that can finally be seen on DVD from New Yorker and Project X Productions under “The Cinema Of Peter Watkins” banner.    Gladiatorena (as Gladiators) and the TV production Edvard Munch are promised as pending.  I hope we get his entire catalog from these companies for having done such an ace job here!

 

The 1.33 X 1 image was shot in 16mm by Joan Churchill and this new print comes from the 35mm blow-up negative.  It looks good and has some detail limits that are partly from the stylized look of the film, as well as simply being shot in 16mm of the time.  Either way, this looks as good on DVD as it ever could and one of the best full screen transfers we have seen in the past year.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is a clean recreation of the original optical mono sound.  It is a fine presentation overall.

 

Extras include Watkins rarely seen and nicely done short The Forgotten Faces from 1961, his fourth.  It is black and white, and very smart.  Watkins has filmed a great 28-minutes-long introduction to the film you could watch before, but should watch after the film, which demands repeat viewing.  You also get an exceptional audio commentary by Dr. Joseph A. Gomez - a well read and informed film scholar with outstanding insight, Watkins filmography, Scott MacDonald’s fine essay on audience response to the film, original 1971 press kit on the DVD and an exceptional 24 page booklet with intense text and information about the film and Watkins.  Many Criterion releases are not this good or rich with such information.

 

That Watkins has had to retreat to the Nederlands speaks volumes about how he is too scary to the Right and too realistic for the Politically Correct Left.  That is all the more reason to see his rediscovery and return, especially since he still does work.  Any filmmaker or fan worth anything should consider Punishment Park not just a must-see, but a must-own film.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo