on 11/12/2025, 9:47 am
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/nov/03/peter-watkins-film-making-revolutionary-war-game-culloden-punishment-park?
From the essay--
At the beginning of the 1970s, Watkins gave us a movie that is less well known than Culloden and The War Game, but is perhaps his masterpiece. Punishment Park, from 1971, is closer to the deadpan dystopian satire that was soon to be fashionable in Hollywood, but is absolutely characteristic of Watkins.
Though it is set in the US, a crisp, received-pronunciation English voice introduces what is apparently to be a BBC-style documentary. The American government is getting tough with hippies, troublemakers and radicals, and makes them choose between 20 years in jail or a few days in the mysterious new “Punishment Park”. Of course most choose the Park, not knowing what is in store, and for once Watkins’ godlike narrator loses his cool at what is happening, eventually screaming in horror and disgust, as if Ludovic Kennedy or David Attenborough had been reduced to a nervous breakdown. It is an unforgettable moment.
Responses