Punishment Park



Both controversial and relentless in its depiction of suppression and brutality, Punishment Park was heavily attacked by the mainstream press and permitted only the barest of releases in 1971. However, like Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool (1969) and Robert Kramer’s Ice (1969), Peter Watkins’ film has established itself as one of the key, yet rarely seen, radical films of the late 1960s/early 1970s. Giving voice to the disaffected youth of America that had lived through the campus riots at Berkeley, the trial of the Chicago Seven, and who were witnessing the escalation of the Vietnam War, Punishment Park was named by Rolling Stone as one of their top ten films of 1971 and has earned many admirers in the four decades since its release.

Set in a detention camp in an America of the near-future, Punishment Park’s pseudo-documentary style (continuing Watkins’ subversive innovations with Culloden and The War Game) places a British film crew amongst a group of young students and minor dissidents who have opted to spend three days in ‘Bear Mountain Punishment Park’. The detainees, rather than accept lengthy jail sentences for their ‘crimes’, gamble their freedom on an attempt to reach an American flag — on foot and without water — through the searing heat of the desert. The pursuit of Group 637 — a lethal, one-sided game of cat-and-mouse with a squad of heavily armed police and National Guardsmen — is contrasted with the corrupt trial of Group 638 by a quasi-judicial tribunal.

Unlike Easy Rider’s mythologising of American counter-culture, Punishment Park’s uncompromising stance, and its uneasy parallels with Guantanamo Bay, retain a powerful and prescient message in the post-9/11 present. Rarely seen in the UK, The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to celebrate Punishment Park’s 40th anniversary with its first ever release on Blu-ray.

Special Features

DUAL FORMAT RELEASE INCLUDING BLU-RAY AND DVD VERSIONS OF THE FILM

• Newly restored high-definition transfer (shot on 16mm, Punishment Park has been remastered from a new 35mm print struck from the restored 35mm blow-up negative held in Paris)
• 30-minute video introduction by Peter Watkins
• Full-length audio commentary by Dr. Joseph A. Gomez (author of the 1979 book Peter Watkins)
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• 40-page booklet with two essays and reprints

Wow. This is fantastic news! I'm so please that I'm almost tempted to resort to emoticons to express my excitement. Almost.

Great, great news.

Watkins is one of the truly overlooked and underappreciated filmmakers alive today and Punishment Park is an amazing, shocking landmark film.

Here is a review of the French DVD: Punishment Park

It's a pretty good edition. I hope that the MoC edition also contains Diary of an Unknown Soldier and Forgotten Faces, as they have to be seen by modern audiences.

Watkins' official website: Watkins

This is a film I've been wanting to see for a long time (and I came very close to springing for the French Watkins box). Stunning cover, by the way.

I think they are both extras on the respective BFI DVDs of Culloden and The War Game.

Edvard Munch started its first of four nights in Vancouver last night. It was phenomenal, and appropriately enough, alienated a sizeable chunk of the audience, with numerous walkouts. I've really never seen anything like it, esp in terms of editing (much more like a mosaic as opposed to any standard), as well as the performances and how they are captured (the only comparison i can think of is The Office, was Watkins' style an inspiration?). I've never really felt much of an attachment to the traditional visual arts, but this film brought them to life and had me enthralled.

On the other hand, the crowd was appalling, numerous late arrivals, more walkouts, a loud yawn drew laughter, the douchebag behind me, along w/ tapping his foot on the back of my seat, delivered this insight a good 2/3's or more of the way through, "They are gloomy". In this case, I don't think it would've been terribly out of line to start a fight in the theater ("Film starts riot") but I didn't want to miss the rest. All that and the lights came up fairly early in the credit sequence, which if you've seen the film, you'll know commences minutes before the ultimate conclusion. The remaining 3/4's of the crowd, most of whom couldn't leave soon enough, was whittled down to maybe 1/8 (seriously, six or seven people) by the time it was actually over.

To get back on topic, based on this, my first Watkins experience, MoC has me again with their upcoming Punishment Park and future Watkins releases, esp given the quality of their previous titles and excellent service.

Are they (or you, peerpee) planning more Watkins releases? I'd be very, very excited to see more of his films available, especially Privilege and The Gladiators (but really anything). He is a filmmaker that needs to be reclaimed and even (sorry for the dirty word) canonized by the critical and dvd-releasing community.

Also, not to get gossipy, but presumably MoC is in touch with Watkins? What is the extent of his participation in this release? I had heard that he has (again) announced his retirement from films after the problems with La commune -- has this made him inaccessible? I did a fairly substantial project on Watkins last year (that I hope to revive at some point), and I wanted to get in touch with him, but I was unsure how amenable or interested he would be.

Can't hurt if you approach him.

True enough, but I also didn't think I had sufficient need to approach him at the time. His website is quite exhaustive and was able to answer nearly all my questions. Perhaps if/when I start writing on his films again, I'll have some specific questions that I'll need to ask him directly.

...so how will it compare to this one?

DVDTalk Review

Damn Disgrace! A friend snagged me this as a surprise early birthday present last night, and I spent all evening going pouring through it to discuss here.

According to an insert with the disc, the same company also plans on releasing "The Gladiators" (a.k.a. "The Peace Game") and "Edvard Munch" in the near future. Happy day!

-BJ

Oh, joy!

Hate to sound like a curmudgeon, but is there any significant difference between MoC's edition and the Canadian edition? I'm asking because I was originally thinking of picking up both editions, but now I'm re-thinking my position. I can see that your introduction from Watkins is listed at 30 minutes while the Canadian version is listed at 28 minutes, and that their booklet is only 22 pages, while yours is 32 pages. I'm just wondering if there is an significant difference in content, since it appears that the source of the transfers are the same and both include the same commentary track.

You curmudgeon you!

It's the same Watkins intro.

Our booklet will be more extensive, but this will probably be one for the packaging tarts/completists.

If you're NTSC-native, I'd probably advise to get the NTSC version (unless you're *really* into our packaging)

I think I'm buying this one.

It's only a few dollars difference. I think I'll go with the MoC. Heck, you never know; maybe those few dollars will help Humanity and Paper Balloons come out sooner (I won't mention this again... must learn the art of patience). Really looking forward to this.

The boxart is now yellow.

PUNISHMENT PARK is wrapped and at the pressing plant. It will definitely be out in October.

This will be one of the best releases of 2005 for me.

Will there be more Watkins from MoC, peerpee? What about Privilege? That is long overdue on DVD.

Has a final release date been decided?

Alex Cox wrote a nice article about Peter Watkins a couple of days ago, in case anyone is interested.

I picked up a copy of the Project X release. What an amazing film! White hot topicality -- it feels like it could have been made just yesterday.

Release date is October 3, 2005

Reviews of the UK theatrical re-release from this last weekend:

THE GUIDE (GUARDIAN) - FILM OF THE WEEK - "A lost classic whose time has come."

THE TELEGRAPH [Sukhdev Sandhu] - "It's unlikely that any film released in 2005 will rival Punishment Park... Peter Watkins is a remarkable director, whose visionary films deserve - no, need - to be far better-known: this stupendous, earth-scorching missive is one of his very finest."

TIMEOUT - CRITICS CHOICE - "this is fascinating, gut-wrenching and thought-provoking filmmaking."

THE OBSERVER [Mark Kermode] - "It's raw and angry and not a little hysterical...there's no faulting Watkins's convictions."

THE GUARDIAN [Peter Bradshaw] - "Peter Watkins's dystopian nightmare still grips, imagining hippies and radicals getting tortured for quasi-judicial sport by the National Guard ... satire of the most intimately powerful sort."

Just watched this at the cinema in Leeds, it's a powerful and still relevant today. Coming out of the cinema and seeing Police all over the place with HUGE guns was surreal in the extreme. Turns out that those London bombers come from the very streets that I walk.

With all this in mind the movie has left a huge imprint on me.