By Matt, submitted on Wed, 01/25/2012 - 8:43pm
Jan 26 2012 8:00 pm
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Join Cinema41 January 26th at our new home, the Salvage Vanguard Theater, for this special and important screening about one of the most controversial moments in recent American history. --------------- If you are at all concerned with freedom and civil liberties, Sam Green and Bill Siegel's The Weather Underground is a film that will not serve as a beacon of hope. In its documentation of the government's systematic crackdown on activists and community leaders during the Vietnam War, it reminds us of the brutality that our government has been all too eager to deploy in defense the status quo. But on the other hand, the film shows its audience that there are no easy answers in the quest for social and political change. Fueled by their anger at both the escalation of violence in Vietnam and the systematic assassination of the leaders of the Black Panther party, the members of the Weather Underground (a group of predominantly white student activists) saw violent confrontation as inevitable. The real drama of the story however, lies not in the group's meticulously planned bombings or the fearless stand they took against tremendous murder, corruption, and injustice. Rather, the lesson to be gleaned from The Weather Underground occurs when the FBI's relentless and oft-illegal pursuit of the group drives them into hiding. Mired in the proverbial underground of false identities and life on the run, these once-violent activists are reduced to passively watching the tide of public opinion turn against the government and lead to the cessation of hostilities in Vietnam. It becomes evident that their use violence made them no better than the trigger government they detested. In the pursuit of their vision of justice, The Weather Underground let themselves become what they hated most. Ultimately, The Weather Underground is a film that does not end happily. Though the group was mostly let off the hook due to the government's law breaking and procedural errors, the fact remains that people are still dying, wars rage on elsewhere, and their work mostly proved to be a stumbling block for change as opposed to a catalyst. Their story shows that change comes not from aggression but from discourse and dialogue. Of course it would be more convenient to bomb our way toward liberty, but The Weather Underground shows that such a course of action often leads to little more than ignominy and scorn. The film skewers the government, but its true power comes from the fact that it is not afraid to show that peace is achieved in spite of groups like the Weather Underground, not because of them.
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