Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst (2004)

I looked all this stuff up on Wikipedia the other day; I don't remember why. My whole life, I'd known at least vaguely of who Patty Hearst was. I'd seen that picture, that famous picture, many, many times. I'd read the old Doonesbury strips on the subject. I'd laughed hugely at her portrayal of Wanda's Mom in Cry-Baby. And, eventually, I pieced together at least some of the story. As much of the story as most people know, I guess, and more than most people my age, almost certainly. But until a couple of weeks ago, I honestly had no idea why the group that kidnapped her was called the Symbionese Liberation Army. In my head, I vaguely paralelled it with the Palestinian Liberation Organization, a looming presence of my politically-aware childhood. I was never sure, however, what group the Symbionese were. (For the curious, it's a word invented by Donald DeFreeze, the group's original leader, based on the word "symbiosis.") This documentary really starts with the first major action of the SLA, the assassination of Oakland school superintendent Dr. Marcus Foster and wounding of his deputy, Robert Blackburn. Two SLA members went to prison for this shooting. Following that, on 4 February, 1974, the SLA kidnapped heiress Patricia Campbell Hearst, granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst. The SLA told the family that they would free her if the imprisoned members were released, which of course the family could not do. Then, they demanded that the family distribute enormous amounts of food to the poor, a program that didn't really work. Eventually, the tapes that they released from Patty had her declaring her rejection of her family and society and her taking the new name Tania. It was after this that she took part in the Hibernia Bank robbery, the group's most famous activity. Later, five SLA members (including DeFreeze) were killed as part of a firefight in Los Angeles. Eventually, Hearst was captured, tried, and convicted for her role in the Hibernia Bank robbery. She later had her sentence commuted by Jimmy Carter and was pardoned by Bill Clinton. The film takes essentially no stance on Hearst's claims that she was brainwashed by the SLA. While her story is used as a frame to hold the story together and her name features prominently in one of the titles under which this was released, there is little detail about Hearst herself mentioned. The details of the SLA's activities rate more mention. Hearst is not among those former SLA members interviewed, though I doubt she would have agreed to be so if asked. There is, at the end, a brief shot of a young, clean-cut Patty Hearst beaming at the camera after her commutation; this, I think, serves to remind us that no other member of the organization received such favourable treatment--though Russell Little, one of two men convicted in the Foster murder, was eventually acquitted in a retrial in 1981. He is one of the ones interviewed. Groups like this frustrate me. They put so much effort into their bank robberies and their gun stockpiling. In fact, it was impulsive shoplifting on the part of member William Harris that indirectly caused the deaths of DeFreeze, Nancy Ling Perry, Angela Atwood, Willie Wolfe (after whom Stephen King named his infamous rabid dog--his nom de guerre was Cujo), and Patricia Soltysik. The sequence of events is hard to follow and harder to believe, but it's true. Yes, the SLA got some poor people in California fed, but since the food distribution was poorly organized, the distribution in one area led to violence and all of it was shut down. Other than that, I am curious as to what anyone thinks they accomplished. The only member most people can name these days is Patty Hearst, and she has long since rejected their values if she ever really espoused them in the first place. Surely that effort could have been put to better use elsewhere. If Hearst has never shown real remorse about her crimes, it's hard to consider the others to have done so, either. In the disc's special features, there is footage from the Sacramento courthouse where four of the SLA members pleaded guilty to the murder of bank teller Myrna Opsahl, killed in the Crocker Bank robbery, where Hearst allegedly drove the getaway car. William Harris expressed the opinion that putting him in prison wouldn't solve anything--possibly true--and that it was a great hardship on his family, even comparing it briefly to the hardship Opsahl's family suffered upon her death. It's really horrible. Even if they do feel remorse, none of them went out of their way to ensure that they would make amends to the family for it.