Punishment Park

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http://www.buzzflash.com/reviews/05/11/rev05121.html

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November 22, 2005

Punishment Park (DVD)

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

"Punishment Park" is the most powerful film BuzzFlash has seen in recent memory.

Released back in 1971 and set against the escalating war in Vietnam and the polarization and rage tearing apart the country at home, the film is a timeless and haunting allegory of America in a state of crisis. Anti-war protestors, pacifists, and dissidents are sentenced without trial by government-appointed tribunals. The "prisoners" are then given the option to forgo lengthy jail sentences if they submit to being guinea pigs in a simulated manhunt at "Punishment Park." The prisoners have 3 days to race through the California desert without water to reach an American flag 50 miles away while heavily armed federal marshals and national guardsmen pursue them in a twisted game of capture the flag. Scenes of the prisoners' evading capture and fighting for survival are juxtaposed with contentious sentencing hearings of other dissidents who scream and argue with members of the tribunal – some prisoners are bound and gagged to control their outbursts – as they are forced to choose between prison or Punishment Park.

The film rendered BuzzFlash, like so many audiences, utterly speechless.

The film's distributors and critics alike mostly succeeded in shelving "Punishment Park" after its release because of its raw emotional power. Though stashed away for decades and relegated to college media studies courses, this is a film whose time has finally come.

Shot in a documentary format and infused with hyperrealism, "Punishment Park" is so provocative that some reviewers and audiences ask: "Did this actually happen?" No, the stirring events in the film are fiction, but the powerful message from "Punishment Park" is that it could happen here in America – at least we can imagine it happening – which is just as terrifying.