Guerilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst Movie Review:


It’s not called ‘Patty Hearst,’ or ‘Patty Hearst’s Story.’ It’s “The Taking of Patty Hearst.” There will be people who criticise this film on the basis
that Patty Hearst is not interviewed; that we never hear all the facts about what she went through when she was kidnapped. But her side of the story is already well documented. You can get it in books, in film (Paul Schrader made a movie about her that WAS called “Patty Hearst”), and on the internet. This is not really her story.

So whose story is it? Hearst (granddaughter of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst) was kidnapped in 1974 by ‘The Symbionese Liberation Army,’ a group of radical leftists. The group demanded that her father arrange a goodwill gesture: giving food to all the poor people in California. Messages by Patty were released to the media; she said she was fine and unharmed, and that her parents should just follow the demands and she will not be hurt. After following the demands to the best of their abilities, the family receives another message, wherein she says that she has joined the SLA, announcing her new name to be ‘Tania.’

Is this film the story of the SLA? In a way. Is it sympathetic to the SLA? No. Does it dismiss them as evil terrorists? No. The film is more about the times, the people and the press than either the SLA or Patty Hearst. The film opens with footage of people protesting for peace during the war in
Vietnam. We see President Nixon, who says his opinion will absolutely not be altered by the demonstrators. Russell Little, the founder of the SLA, is interviewed about what he felt during that time. Little is imprisoned for the killing of a school superintendent, whom he did not kill (another SLA
member killed him). This was before the kidnapping of Hearst.

I knew very little about this story, and was not alive to witness it. Part of the reason I found the film so entertaining was because it was new to me.
I was astonished by some of the recovered footage, some of which has never been released before. Director Robert Stone has created an excellent
documentary from archived news footage and interviews carried out about four years ago with Little and Michael Bortin, another SLA member. It unfolds with the excitement of a great thriller, and yet it never seems to be handling this material lightly. It doesn’t take sides, and inspires a lot
of thoughts about the American culture. It’s a great documentary.

In one particularly memorable sequence, we are shown the poor of California being fed in accordance with the SLA’s demands, but the distribution of the food is so poorly organised that riots and fights start. A lorry is opened and boxes of food are simply thrown into the crowd, like animals being fed scraps in a zoo.

The messages Hearst sends to her family, and the media, are odd indeed. The press, which has basically taken up residence outside Patty’s parent’s house, are ready to cover the story as long as it is a hot item. The way she delivers these speeches is frightening. She calls her fiancé a ‘sexist’ and her parents ‘fascist pigs.’ There is no doubt she is being told what to say, but what is surprising is the way she says it. She manages to say it as if she means it; she doesn’t sound like she is being forced.

The group is found, eventually, in a house in California, which is surrounded by police. The SLA refuses to come out, and eventually they end
up dead (Patty was not in the house; she was elsewhere with other SLA members). A reporter being interviewed points out that this was the SLA’s
chance to actually make a difference; all the media were there; the SLA could have sent a message to the world. They could have won even if they
ended up imprisoned. Instead, they kept fighting.

One of the film’s interviewees, who met Hearst’s kidnappers, says how disappointed he was. They seemed, he said, kind of flat, and not very
bright. This is not a big surprise; the group was made up, it seems, of impatient idealists who thought that violence was the only way to achieve
equality in the world. SLA, however, sort of seemed inevitable, in a way. In a time when no one in American government was listening to the active
left, and nothing was being done to stop the Vietnam war despite the voice of the people, well, the handwriting was on the wall.

A lot of ‘naïve radicals,’ as Bortin calls them in the film, supported what the SLA did to Hearst, and considered her a heroine for tossing aside her
status as a rich girl and fighting. The notion of rebels against society and authority was (and still often is) so romanticised that these people
never really considered the actual situation, and what Hearst must have been going through. This film is not so much about the kidnapping, the full
details of which we will never know, but about the atmosphere in America that allowed the SLA to form, and the kidnapping to take place.

The film discusses what is known as Stockholm Syndrome, whereby the hostage develops a bond with her kidnappers, to the point, sometimes, of sexual attraction. When we hear those messages from Hearst, we sense that maybe she is able to convince even herself that what she is saying is right, because she would die if she did not join the group. Could it be that Hearst, an heiress, had just had such a privileged, naïve life that she was
so impressionable that the group could convince her that they were doing the right thing? By not showing us Patty Hearst’s side of the story, we are
left to make up our own mind about her.

How was it possible for her to become such a different person for that time when she was an SLA member? She conformed to the SLA’s beliefs, and when, at the film’s end, she is back among her family, she conforms to their beliefs. Listen to what she says in the TV interview in the final scene.

I saw this film a day after “Peace One Day,” the documentary about a man trying to arrange a day of international ceasefire and peace. The films, in
a way, come to the same conclusion; mindless violence does not lead to peace. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, a lot of people were protesting for peace.
Some wanted to protest peacefully, others thought violence was the only way to get their message across, like the SLA. Some were protesting because of the beliefs in their minds and their hearts, others were just doing what those around them were doing. Like Patty Hearst.

***** (out of 5)

Adam Whyte

With a timeliness that's almost creepy, documentarian Stone traces the activities of the Symbionese Liberation Army in the 1970s, outlining in detail their most notorious action: the kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst. The film is coherent and gripping as it chronicles a rag-tag group of revolutionaries.

The SLA was never terribly well-understood (the film never explains what "Symbionese" means), and many dismissed them as disaffected middle-class university students. But their manifesto eerily echoes criticisms levelled at today's American government: a right-wing disregard for the poor and minority groups combined with too much corporate control over government. But as the free-thinking 1960s gave way to the more cynical 1970s, these young people took violent action to protest the disparity between that the government was saying and doing. As one observes, they grew up hearing everyone say, "We saved the world from Hitler," but watching what was happening in Vietnam showed that "we're now being Hitler".

The film shows a handful of people who considered themselves patriots as they took on the system--without a terribly clear idea of how to accomplish their goals. New interviews with two SLA members (Little and Bortin) narrate the film along with contributions from journalists (Findley and Lester), an FBI agent (Grove) and the Hearst family's ransom negotiator (Kramer). The rest speak from archive audio and film footage. Grove edits this into a driving, riveting narrative, outlining perhaps for the first time exactly how the events unfolded, and making sure we get every angle on the story.

He's also careful to make sure we catch the relevance of these events, from the interspersed Robin Hood clips to a couple of significant firsts: this was both the first-ever media encampment (outside the Hearst mansion) and the first live coverage of a horrific police assault. The footage is astonishing, revealing the events of 30 years ago and some scary truths about where the world is today. Especially as the SLA case was reopened in light of new powers given to courts in the wake of 9/11, resulting in new prison terms for several former members. Chilling and essential.

Rich Cline

Site Contents Copyright© The Z Review, unless used with permission.This site has no intention to infringe on the rights of the film owners of Guerilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst and intellectual copyright holders of the movies mentioned herein & hold copyright over the movie, characters, merchandise & storyline.