The Weather Underground
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Movie Reviews of The Weather Underground
Movie Review: Important that we remember
Summary: 5 Stars
I was a relatively young part of the era to which this excellent documentary refers. I never got into the violent dimension of it--but nor do I claim to be a "pacifist." So there's lots to reflect on...
The Students for a Democratic Society was, as people from that era remember, a "radical" group during an era in which the United States was exterminating Vietnamese peasants while subjugating black activists at home. A faction of the SDS, the Weather Underground, unhappy with the glacial rate of change, in essence took over the organization and fostered violence.
The FBI kept tabs on them--for reasons not without some justification. Some of their leaders were constructing a bomb to be used at an officers club when a short circuit detonated the bomb. Those working on it were killed. Then the FBI knew they had a target.
Todd Gitlin, who'd been the president of the more "moderate" SDS, comments repeatedly throughout the film. Needless to say, he disapproved of the direction the Weather Underground was taking them. He argues that when they plot to bomb essentially innocent people, they become like, say, Hitler or Stalin. It becomes a "religious" cause that needs little more justification. (Yeah, there was the youth-culture dimension of it too, the rejection of monogamy, the "free sex," much of which was pretty naive.)
After the self-destruction of some of the Weathermen, the remaining faction decided that the bombing wasn't inappropriate, just the killing of the innocent was. So they bombed various institutions over the next few years to make their point--while making sure no one would be needlessly hurt. In the meantime, eloquent Black Panther leader Fred Hampton was murdered by the authorities, and the Weather Underground endeared that cause.
I should add what the film does: that later in "the era," there were activities that made the movement look bad, e.g., that Manson family and Altamont. I'm glad the producers didn't lose track of those tidbits on many of which we (mistakenly) reflect more than we do on the positive results of the era.
The Weather Underground members went truly underground to come out many years later.
All in all, this was a superb documentary. As one can imagine, those who were active in the movement then have "mixed feelings" about them now described best, perhaps, by Mark Rudd. Did they make mistakes? Of course they did. Do they proclaim that "all we did was wrong"? No! That's among the dimensions of their movement that I appreciate.
It's important to recognize how wrong the US foreign policy was in that era (something for which we'll be paying for decades if not centuries.) So something doubtless needed to be done.
I note too that, aside from one character, still in prison in NY for an event in which some were killed after his Weather affiliation, they are all employed in causes of many kinds, i.e., they didn't all become insurance company executives, which is the stereotype on which those who decry the 60s movements rely. And another very important dimension the film covers is that most of the Weather Underground were NOT prosecuted and jailed despite some of their activities. It seems the FBI had broken so many laws in tailing the activists that the bureau couldn't pursue a case against them! (There was coverage too of the group in Media, PA who broke into the FBI office there and exposed to the media the questionable and clearly illegal activities of the FBI. It should make one reflect on the surveillance that is being rationalized today ostensibly based on "terror" threats!)
I recommend this for students today--many of whom are more sold on the Super Bowl than on Iraq--for people who want to recollect an era and its causes without all the fluff the pop media attach to it. There's always something to learn and this film offers a few dimensions of that learning and, again, much on which to reflect.
Movie Review: YOU DO NEED A WEATHERMAN (PERSON) TO KNOW WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS
Summary: 5 Stars
In a time when I, among others, are questioning where the extra-parliamentary opposition to the Iraq War is going and why it has not made more of an impact on American society it was rather refreshing to view this documentary about the seemingly forgotten Weather Underground that as things got grimmer dramatically epitomized one aspect of opposition to the Vietnam War. If opposition to the Iraq war is the political fight of my old age Vietnam was the fight of my youth and in this film brought back very strong memories of why I fought tooth and nail against it. And the people portrayed in this film, the core of the Weather Underground, while not politically kindred spirits then or now, were certainly on the same page as I was- a no holds- barred fight against the American Empire. We lost that round, and there were reasons for that, but that kind of attitude is what it takes to bring down the monster. But a revolutionary strategy is needed. That is where we parted company.
One of the political highlights of the film is centered on the 1969 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) Convention that was a watershed in the student anti-war protest movement. That was the genesis of the Weathermen but it was also the genesis of the Progressive Labor Party-led faction that wanted to bring the anti-war message to the working class by linking up the student movement with the fight against capitalism. In short, to get to those who were, or were to be, the rank and file soldiers in Vietnam or who worked in the factories. In either case the point that was missed , as the Old Left had argued all along and which we had previously dismissed out of hand, was that it was the masses of working people who were central to `bringing the war home' and the fight against capitalism. That task still confronts us today.
One of the paradoxical things about this film is that the Weather Underground survivors interviewed had only a vague notion about what went wrong. This was clearly detailed in the remarks of Mark Rudd, a central leader, when he stated that the Weathermen were trying to create a communist cadre. He also stated, however, that after going underground he realized that he was out of the loop as far as being politically effective. And that is the point. There is no virtue in underground activity if it is not necessary, romantic as that may be. To the extent that any of us read history in those days it was certainly not about the origins of the Russian revolutionary movement in the 19th century. If we had we would have found that the above-mentioned fight in 1969 was also fought out by that movement. Mass action vs. individual acts, heroic or otherwise, of terror. The Weather strategy of acting as the American component of the world-wide revolutionary movement to bring the Empire to its knees certainly had (and still does) have a very appealing quality. However, a moral gesture did not (and will not) bring this beast down. While the Weather Underground was made up a small group of very appealing subjective revolutionaries its political/moral strategy led to a dead end. The lesson to be learned; you most definitely do need weather people to know which way the winds blow. Start with Karl Marx.
Movie Review: The Stormy Times of the Weathermen( and Women)
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the best documentary on the group collectivly known as the "Weather Underground".Shows the turbulent times perfectly.Many political currents were surging together,yet no one knew where the riptides would collide.You had good people wanting change,and bad people wanting to cause trouble.There is an interesting irony here.When Saigon finally fell to the VietCong,the Western radikals began to fall apart as well.Why if Third World communism was advancing,did European Old World Labour and American New World socialism regress?It was interesting to watch the former leftist activists sadly describe their youthful political conflicts and the commerades they lost along the way.Some of the radikals ,who were of the Jewish faith,were left like fish out of water.They rejected their Jewish ritual observances,embraced wandering Bohemian values,and later had to deal with evangelical mores around them.I wonder if Ira Einhorn had any contact with the Weathermen? Tony Alamo never went back to jewish,and went on to become an evangelical minister.I always thought the 'Weathermen' and the 'Weather Underground' got their name from Uncle Joe Stalin.During Stalin's early days,he worked with a group of scientific meteorologists,at a weather observatory.And they surely talked about political beliefs and their disdane of the oppressive Tsar.This documentary ended on a sour note for communists and leftists alike.I wonder if communism is realy dead.China now has the largest economy in the world.South America is moving forward with refined socialism.Once the right-wing dictators were moved along,their Latin American economies began to improve,under left-wing socialist policies.North Korea and Cuba ,controlled by internal blood kinship,has remained stagnet and fruitless.It appears the red radikals of the '60s went on to become 'Christian Socialists'.Many Jewish yippies appear to have suffered by leaving their rabbinical family values.Abbie Hoffmann overdosed and Jerry Rubin sold out to commerce.Ira Einhorn did not become a 'Soldier of Christ' and was later charged in the senseless death of his girl-friend ,Holly Maddox.Holly was a young Southern girl,from a conservative family.She was like a lost sheep,in search of a meaningful bell-wether.The zeitgeist of the times,mislead her towards the hippie pied-piper,Ira Einhorn.As Leftism began to ebb out,and the ethos began to change,the couple differed and splittered.This documentary shows that not all the sixties marriages ended in complete failure.Bill Ayers is still married to Bernadine Dohrn.The photos ,throughout the documentary,are amazing.The graffic photos of Jay Sebring and Sharon Tate are shocking.Several interesting footage shots of the various demostrations and police-battles,yesterday and today.A segment of film has even the defrocked academic and the High Pope of Dope,Timothy Leary.Which shows that there were so many varied causes and very different people ,working together,to promote change.To show that the 'norm' was abnormal and make the staus-quo into the 'status of what should be' for all.Movie Review: A sad snapshot that still resonates today
Summary: 5 Stars
Shocking, engrossing, enlightening and ultimately heartbreaking, "The Weather* Underground" is a new documentary that should probably be seen by just about anybody who doesn't know its story and is at all interested in America and its past, present and future.The movie is a brief history of the Weathermen, a radical group of anti-war, anti-racism protesters who, in the 1960s, splintered off from the Students for a Democratic Society and, as the Vietnam War grew and grew, became more and more aggressive in its tactics.
I knew a little about the group beforehand but had no idea that, for example, its members once bombed the U.S. Capitol. They also set off explosives at a New York City police headquarters, the Presidio in San Francisco, a Queens courthouse, a National Guard headquarters and at an office of the New York Department of Corrections, among other targets.
These actions are shocking and wrong in and of themselves, but in a post-9/11 environment, they take on an even larger sense of menace. But it's to the movie's credit that it's able to present these situations in a historical context without supporting or completely condemning the young people involved. Sam Green, with co-director Bill Siegel, strongly object to the methods of the Weathermen but are obviously and understandably sympathetic to the opinions and despair that motivated them.
"Every second, from 1965 to 1975, I was always aware that our country was attacking Vietnam," says former Weatherman Mark Rudd. "Our country was killing millions of people in Vietnam . . . This revelation was more than we could handle. We didn't know what to do about it."
Later, he adds, "I helped found an organization whose goal was the violent overthrow of the government of the United States."
Says Brian Flanagan, another ex-Weatherman (who, incidentally, once won $23,000 on "Jeopardy!"), "When you feel you have right on your side, you can do some horrific things."
Somehow, Green and Siegel managed to find and interview many of the other key participants, and the stark contrast between the Weathermen today and their old mug shots is striking -- some have rethought their actions while some seem just as committed now as then. But the tragic figures of the movie aren't just a group of young people whose enthusiasm and outrage led them astray, nor are they those that the group lashed out against, but everybody involved. "The Weather Underground" is a sad snapshot of a time that still resonates today.
The commentary by director Green is an extremely well-done track. Green is very adept at opening up the movie and explaining things that the film itself doesn't have time to go into detail about.
Movie Review: Note to one reviewer: Ayers and Obama are not best friends
Summary: 5 Stars
It's really sad that a knucklehead like "MSU Tifoso" should be allowed to review this film, but we do live in the land of the free and the home of the not-so-brave, so there you have it. That guy obviously didn't watch the documentary about the Weather Underground, he was just web-surfing to places where he could express his immature opinions about President Obama, who by the way was just a kid in the 60's and of course had no knowledge of who Bill Ayers was. And he is not today Bill Ayers "best friend", as any rational, mature adult knows. But obviously MSU Tifoso is more comfortable with the Rush Limbaugh crowd of "dittoheads" than he is in any thoughtful forum that deals in facts, and so I can only assume that he must also buy the line that Obama is a Muslim terrorist bent on destroying this country, not perfecting it as Bush/Cheney so brilliantly and intelligently did during their 8-year run to infamy.
My adivce to that clown is to watch the movie. The Weather Underground's goal to stir up revolution and its resort to sometimes violent tactics (bombs, one murder) is still rightfully controversial. But they were also acting out of frustration with the U.S. government's systematic program of annihilation of millions of innocent people in Southeast Asia, as well as ongoing, institutionalized racism at home. It can be plausibly claimed that the government's ongoing use of violence against non-white peoples -- overseas and domestically -- produced a similar response by outraged, idealistic young Americans who, feeling betrayed by a government that was acting more like Ginsberg's Moloch than the leader of the free world, decided, rightly or wrongly, that the only recourse they had was to literally fight fire with fire. We still have a lot to answer for concerning the Vietnam War, as well as allowing Bush/Cheney to brainwash/scare a large segment of the population into meekly accepting our destruction of Iraq, while hemmorraghing money out of the U.S. Treasury to fatten the already bulging wallets of their corporate clients (Halliburton, Blackwater, et al) and all the other profiteers of the military-industrial complex. There's a lot of blood on our hands, and while we can disagree with the Weather Underground's approach on some levels, they were not wrong when they morally, and in some instances physically, opposed American aggression, militarism, and imperialism. Ironically, THEY were the ones calling for a true American exceptionalism, not the blowhards who defended the flag without thinking, tacitly supported racial inequality, blindly supported the war, and voted for the monstrous Nixon without blushing.