MovieChat Forums > Punishment Park (1972) Discussion > films like this make me laugh

films like this make me laugh

posted 14 years ago by chaosbaron
4 replies | jump to latest

This kind of film seems so desperate to establish a point that it is defeating the purpose it claims to serve. This is like propaganda of any other kind. Of course I only got about what I would assume three quarters of the way into the movie before it screwed up and would not continue but I got the basis. As a film it was alright but that is not what I am talking about. Either tyrant or revolutionary, you are taking a side, a side which you more or less want to force on the others around you. Thus all are the same, trying to impose their way of life on others. I do not prefer a film which tries to make the case and state that one is clearly right, I prefer one that lets the viewer decide.

[–] ouuplas 14 years ago

Eh, if politics is what drove them to make the movie in the first place do you think it would be as effective if they pretended to have no opinion?

[–] rhowells2000 14 years ago

What makes me laugh is when people delude themselves that they have fully grasped a film just on one unfinished sitting.

This film is much more than a political tract. It is about the disharmonious way in which people of views at variance with one another struggle to communicate. IMDB is a paradigm case of this. Like in the film, people on here who disagree with each other are incapable of comporting themselves in a calm, reasonable manner, they always need recourse to scurrility and antagonism, elucidating the primitive manner in which human beings interact with each other.

Of course, Watkins sympathies lie more with the left, but given what was happening in America at the time, I hardly find this surprising.

[–] emmaemmaem 13 years ago

I agree with the two above replies... it is politically motivated and shocking. Of course it is going to be one-sided. Whose side did you want represented? The people who believe in the taking away of rights?

I found this film particularly appropriate with the current situation of Guantanamo Bay where you have so many people -including children - incarcerated without trial and tortured all in the name of 'protecting America'.

To be honest, most of the media and political propaganda and films we see daily are one sided from the other side of the argument and it is refreshing to see a film which shows us a left view on war because I haven't seen many.
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"No time for the old in-out,love-I'm just here to check the metre"

[–] Chairman_LMAO 13 years ago

I don't really judge films for their political leanings. I consider myself mostly apolitical, but if I had to choose a side, I'd probably vote conservative. Yet I consider this my favorite film, as it is spectacular art. I think Watkins is somewhat of a paranoid radical, but it doesn't bother me at all. The same as I love Godard's films of the late 60's, which are pretty much Maoist propaganda. Some great films also came out of the Soviet propaganda machine. I don't see why I have to agree with a film's message to appreciate it.

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