Without getting too inside newsroom, the spate of gruesome beheadings in Iraq has stirred up a media debate: How much should we show? And in putting the beheadings on the front page of the paper, the top of the evening news or linked on our Web site, who are we serving–the public or the murderers?
It’s not a new conversation–remember the Munich Olympics?–but with kidnapping a reinvigorated strategy in the Middle East and the media a 24-hour beast, the questions are more significant than ever, all of which rang in my head as I watched Robert Stone’s fascinating new documentary, “Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst.”
The film tells of the homegrown Symbionese Liberation Army and its notoriously strange 1974 abduction of mogul William Randolph Hearst’s granddaughter. Less about Patty, who later joined the SLA and changed her name to Tania, and more focused on the haphazard rise and devolution of the group, “Guerrilla” is a compelling piece of press criticism as it probes the media as terror’s conduit of choice, spreading message and validating violence in the 1970s and today.
Stone’s big get is Russ Little, one of the founding members of the SLA, who along with California prison escapee Donald DeFreeze set out as a modern-day Robin Hood in 1973, dedicating himself to the rights of black prisoners (all of whom the SLA called “political prisoners”) and blue collars. Little was arrested early on and charged with the murder of Marcus Foster, Oakland’s black school superintendent, and quickly became the SLA’s muse–it was in his name that the SLA snatched Hearst, as a bargaining chip.
Stone’s interview of Little, who was granted a retrial, acquitted and released in 1983, is elucidating for its perspective (Little watched the Hearst debacle unfold on the prison TV and radio) not its firsthand account, as are his chats with Mike Bortin, a Berkeley activist in the early ’70s who would later harbor Patty and other SLA fugitives–and much, much later (2003) would go to jail for the 1975 murder of Myrna Opsahl, a nurse who just happened to be in the way of a bullet in one of the SLA’s final robberies.
But the backbone of the film is the media record. Stone digs up old newscasts of bank robberies and the disastrous food drive that the Hearst family undertook at the demand of the SLA and uses the group’s own words–released on tape and by written communique through the local press–as his narration. Carrying the SLA’s military-tinged mission statements, its demands and, finally, Patty’s public berating of her privileged family, the broadcasts fueled the nation’s frenzy and served as a microcosm of the times–the generational clash boiled down to a disagreement between an idealistic, misguided daughter and her traditional, misguided father.
Stone re-creates the events, from the SLA’s formation to Patty’s arrest and pardon, as they actually unfold, but doesn’t attempt to resolve the question of whether the hostage was brainwashed, suffered from Stockholm Syndrome or just darn changed sides. He doesn’t glorify the SLA, nor does he condemn them (the most pointed judgment comes from Bortin, who recalls that when he finally met Patty and crew, he was disappointed at their lack of intelligence and charisma).
What he does do, and does quite well, is understand how the SLA’s story fits into a larger, international narrative. As Stone notes, terrorism “taps into some deep dark soul of the human psyche that the media . . . will always find irresistible. . . . In that way, the story of the SLA is an object lesson in how not to react to political terrorism.”
`Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst’
(star)(star)(star)1/2
Directed by Robert Stone; photographed by Howard Shack, Richard Neill, Stone; edited by Don Kleszy; music by Gary Lionelli; produced by Stone; featuring Mike Bortin, Tim Findley and Russ Little. A Magnolia Pictures release; opens Friday at Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema. Running time: 1:29. No MPAA rating (adult content).
