The Weather Underground

I've had a lifelong fascination with radical groups. Religious heretics of the 11th century or the Jacobins in revolutionary France or the Symbionese Army, they all fascinate me. What drives them, what makes them fight against incredible odds, what makes them give up, it all fascinates me. Only recently has there been a serious body of work on the radicals of the 1960s that attempts to address these questions.

Green and Siegel's contribution to this is the documentary The Weather Underground, the story of how the ultra-militant Weatherman organization grew out of the non-violent SDS. Packed with interviews of many of the main characters - including Mark Rudd (of the Columbia U takeover fame), Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, Brian Flanagan and David Gilbert - and interspersed with period news footage the film provides a sense of the rage that fueled the Weathermen and the regret with which they now regard the past.

Which is not to say that the film is a mea culpa. Most of the interviewees are at pains to explain what they did and why it seemed the only thing to do at the time; not to ask for forgiveness. The interviewees seem so calm and reasonable you could forget what they're talking about which is essentially acts of terrorism and revolution.

There are moments of dark, unintentional humor along the way. Like the footage of the blonde, gum-chewing preppie who tells the reporter they're going to take on the police with "more physical confrontation, whatever's necessary", all the while snapping her Juicy Fruit. Or when Bernardine Dohrn's sister proclaims her actions "Right on and she's far out." I found myself sympathizing with the Black Panther spokesman who dismisses the Weathermen as "muddle-headed." For all their fierce beliefs, they seem to be playing at revolution, casting themselves in the role of revolutionaries based on what they've read rather than what they've experienced. Their efforts to turn themselves into a communist cadre never seem to rise much above leaving in communes, group sex and eating "oatmeal with nothing on it" and "psychological tricks" that one describes as "so cultish."

Yet their beliefs are not simply whims. Rudd and Jaffe speak convincingly of their conviction that doing nothing was a form of participating in the oppression they perceived. Each member made sacrifices to "go underground", a phenomenon one describes as a "state of information control." They saw themselves at war with an oppressive, murderous state and told themselves they were willing to do whatever it took to overthrow it.

And therein lies the rub. As ex-Weatherman Brian Flanagan puts it: "If you think you have the moral high-ground ... you can do some really terrible things." Those terrible things including bombings. It's quite something to see Ayers' and Dohrn's contortions to pat themselves on the back for making a big effort to make sure no one ever got hurt as a result of their bombings. There are several problems with that. First and foremost, once you set a bomb, all bets are off. No matter how many warnings you send out or precautions you take, one mistake or unanticipated action is likely to end in the death or dismemberment of another. All their efforts could have been undone by one act of bad luck. Second, this requires them to go to further contortions to distance themselves from the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion. Describing it as "an autonomous group in New York City" starts off the fun, as if the "group" in NYC had little connection to the rest of the Weatherman. The film includes quotes of regret from most of the interviewees but no exploration for the greater toll the bomb may have taken had it not exploded prematurely.

Green does a good job of trying to present both sides of the story, however, with Todd Gitlin presenting a dissenting New Left view of the Weathermen. The former radicals, in interviews and quotes from letters and memoirs, convey the sheer boredom of life underground. No jobs, no prospects: in a weird way they finally did live the lives of the oppressed they claimed to fight for.

Whether you watch this for entertainment or for enlightenment or both, The Weather Underground delivers. Green and Siegel have begun the effort to "Tease out what was right from what was wrong."

"The Weather Underground" is an interesting documentary about the less peaceful side of the peace movements of the '60s. The Weather Underground is largely forgotten,compared to the Summer of Love in '68,or the Black Panthers. They started out as starry-eyed idealists in Chicago who wanted peace,racial equality,and the end of the Vietnam War. The Weather Underground was mainly composed of privileged white students who championed the causes of the poor and minorities. They decided to be "revolutionary." This documentary walks the fine line when it comes to their seemingly admirable causes and their terrible actions.

"The Weather Underground" starts with starry-eyed idealism,but the "revolution" becomes ugly. As Todd Gitlin,a former member of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) says,they came to the point where mass murder was considered a viable option. Former Weathermen David Rudd and Brian Flanagan (the former won on Jeopardy! recently,the latter is a barkeeper) have repented of their actions. For the Weathermen,"revolution" came to mean destroying property,and perhaps lives,in the process. They went from "make love,not war" to making war on civilians. They blew up the Haymarket statue several times. While they claim they only destroyed property and spared people,they injured their victims;as a result,a judge was paralyzed from the neck down and a policeman was killed. The Weathermen thought their actions were justifiable because of the Vietnam War. The Weather Underground seriously thought bombing the Pentagon would somehow lead to peace.

The Weather Underground wanted a Communist revolution in the US. They found inspiration in Cuba. They wanted to redefine society,with slogans such as "Smash Monogamy!" (it's ironic to see Weatherman William Ayers&Bernadine Dohrn living a bourgeois family life,instead of being in a commune)

"Weather Underground" is still a relevant documentary today. Former Weathermen like Mark Rudd and Brian Flanagan have matured,soberly seeing their idealism gone profoundly wrong. Others,like William Ayers (now a professor) and Bernadine Dohrn (now leading a child&family services project),justify their actions. They reminisce glowingly about the "Days of Rage." It's genuinely chilling.

"Weather Underground" is a barometer of the '60s... and today.

The film itself is a mish-mash. Not a bad film, it is not good, either. It gives little context to why these people would give up the privileges most poor people, black or white, strive for. Could it be, like many bad artists, they believe nobility is to be found in struggle? Ask anyone who's really struggled and they'll consider that view naïve, at best, and pornographic, at worst. The Weather Underground started out in 1969 as a splinter group from the Students for Democratic Society (SDS) called the Weathermen (taken from the lyrics of a Bob Dylan song: `you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows'. They started bombing buildings as `acts of protest', yet were ridiculed by the Black Panthers as a bunch of spoiled white kids who made things tougher for them because they were unskilled. The Weathermen were also reviled by mainstream liberal and anti-war groups as making their points of view seem unpalatable to the moderates in the nation. Ironically, they were seen basically as useful idiots by President Nixon and the Right Wing.
Unlike, say ex-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, in The Fog Of War, only a few of the group seem to have gained any wisdom. Rudd states, `I cherished my hate as a badge of moral superiority', and Flanagan seems to rightly see how close he came to being bin Laden, when he states, `If you think that you have the moral high ground, that's a very dangerous position and you can do some really dreadful things.' A still bitter ex-SDS leader named Todd Gitlin also perfectly nails the ethical morass of the Weathermen, and much of the most radicalized Left, when he states, `They were ready to be mass murderers, the same as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, and their grand projects for the reform of all humanity. In the face of that, ordinary life was dispensable.'
As a film, there are several clever sequences of recreations, that Green recounts well in the DVD commentary, and the lack of funding for the film worked in its favor in at least one aspect. Failing to have the money for classic 1960s rock songs, the film used eerie avant-garde music, which adds to the delusion of the ideas many of the talking heads provide. Overall, the film is a so-so concoction, and the comments add little. A half hour interview with murderer David Gilbert adds little insight, save that the man still has not gotten his act together, and an art film on the terrorists adds even less insight. Overall, the bonus features are rather meager. This film breaks no new ground on the times, nor artistically, and just underscores that the folks involved in any terror movement are not good people, despite their protestations to the contrary. If only Mystery Science Theater 3000 were still around to lampoon this film there might be a good commentary available. Alack, the lack!

Firstly, these are to be reviews of the film, not your opinion about The Weather Underground organization. This is not your blog! Go post your opinions about 60's/70's radicals, the Vietnam War, Nixon, etc. some place else!

Alright. This is a very focused film on the 60's/70's group The Weather Underground. It has contemporary interviews w/its members, a few people from The Black Panthers, a former FBI agent, loads of archival footage and some helpful narratives that guide you through events of the period. It doesn't stray too far from the members of the organization and I don't think it paints an overly sympathetic view of the members. It let's you make your own judgment on whether their actions during the period make them heroes or villains (which you should not post in a review of the film) or at the very minimum, it educates you about a period in American history (I was a toddler at the time & my parents didn't let me read/watch the news nor talk to strangers).

I give this documentary four stars b/c it is very concise & cohesive in its narrative. I didn't get a complete sense of the individual members, but I did get a sense of their motivations, regrets, etc.

After seeing this film, I had to wonder what these people were thinking when they got started. Did they really think that they were going to be the cadre of a nationwide movement to destroy the capitalist system in the United States? It seems so.

One of the biggest flaws, besides their near-total reliance upon violence and the destruction of property, is the simple fact that their whole reason for existing was the Vietnam War. As soon as that war was over, they had no reason to continue.

From the beginning, they lacked any real support from outside their group and that should have made them stop and think. The "Days of Rage" was just an incident where windows got smashed and little more than that. They weren't revolutionaries. They were vandals. For all the time spent in hiding and for all the sacrifices they made, what did they accomplish?

Aside from this documentary and a few other works, there is no lasting legacy of the Weather Underground. One of their members is serving a life sentence, others had served time in prison and been released and some of their members even died in the early years of the group. For what? The United States didn't withdraw from Vietnam because of them specifically, so they couldn't claim the victory that they had suffered for and deprived themselves of creature comforts in its pursuit.

I am glad that most of them have gone on with their lives and have even coninued in progressive causes. However, I see nothing that justifies what they did and I feel sad for their lost and wasted youth.

This is a good film to see for part of the history of the domestic U.S. opposition to the war in Southeast Asia. However, it is also a good film to see for how not to run an anti-war group.