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PATTY HEARST
The story of the 1974 abduction and brainwashing of Patty Hearst reconfigured as a CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI-esque horror show, notable for evocative direction by Paul Schrader and an excellent lead performance by the late Natasha Richardson.
The Package
PATTY HEARST, based on Patricia Campbell Hearst’s 1982 memoir EVERY SECRET
THING, is one of Paul Schrader’s most interesting directorial efforts in many
respects, and among the most underrated (many Schrader retrospectives simply
ignore it). Paul Schrader is of course the screenwriter of films like TAXI
DRIVER, RAGING BULL and THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, and the director of BLUE
COLLAR, the CAT PEOPLE remake, MISHIMA and the controversial EXORCIST prequel
REQUIEM. He’s attracted to dark and esoteric subject matter, making him a
natural choice for PATTY HEARST--which, in an odd twist of fate, set in motion
the relationship between Hearst and trash movie legend John Waters, who met at
the Cannes Film Festival where Hearst was promoting this film. She’s since
appeared in Waters’ films CRY BABY,
SERIAL MOM, PECKER, CECIL B. DEMENTED and A
DIRTY SHAME.
PATTY HEARST didn’t get much respect during its 1988
theatrical bow. It was largely shunned by critics and audiences, although
Natasha Richardson, in her first noteworthy movie role, was rightly singled out
for praise. Richardson, who died in March of 2009, was the daughter of
Vanessa Redgrave and
filmmaker Tony Richardson, the sister of
Joely Richardson and wife of Liam Neeson.
Natasha’s role in PATTY HEARST remains one of her career highlights.
The Story
Patty Hearst is a rich girl who one night in 1974 is
kidnapped from the apartment she shares with her wimpy boyfriend. He runs off
during the attack, leaving Patty to be hauled off to a dingy house where she’s
blindfolded and confined to a closet. Her captors are the Symbionese Liberation
Army, a band of nuts who fancy themselves a revolutionary cabal. The leader is
Cinque, a charismatic black man who wants to overthrow the government, and his
followers are all white people brainwashed by his rhetoric.
Weeks pass and Patty, after such prolonged sensory
deprivation, comes to identify with her captors. Eventually the SLA’s members
remove her blindfold and allow her to mingle with them as an equal, remonikered
Tania. She takes part in a bank robbery in which two men are killed and engages
in much dangerous (though non-fatal) gunplay and bomb throwing.
But the SLA is thrown into chaos when their compound is
breached by police and burned to the ground. Luckily Patty isn’t there at the
time, and so joins up with another chapter of the SLA. Without the leadership
of Cinque, however, the group quickly splinters--and is inevitably shut down for
good by an FBI raid.
Patty is arrested, tried and found guilty for her crimes. The film ends
not with the Presidential acquittal that freed her, but with an incarcerated
Patty defiantly telling her father that she’s fed up with the media and police
spotlight, summed up by the curt sentiment “Fuck them all!”
The Direction
PATTY HEARST is not the conventional based-on-fact
crime drama it was advertised as, but an expressionistic horror-art film. The
early scenes of Patty’s abduction, with their distorted set design, skewed
camera angles and shadowy photography, drive home this point. From there the
film morphs into a more naturalistic but still quite eccentric account packed
with flamboyant touches like a security camera’s eye view of a bank heist
(replicating the footage that was actually broadcast on TV back in the
seventies) and surreal ceiling-less sets.
The cast is packed with strong actors--Ving Rhames, Dana Delany, William
Forsythe--but none more so than Natasha Richardson, who succeeds in rendering
Patty compelling and sympathetic. Richardson was given the thankless task of
playing an individual whose true feelings about her participation in the SLA’s
crimes are left vague. While it certainly seems Patty Hearst was an unwilling
participant acting purely out of survival, the final scenes show a defiant woman
who appears unrepentant about her criminal activities. Schrader never quite
tips his hat in either direction, which is a large part of why this strange,
sustained nightmare of a movie is so provocative--and also why it’s been so
unfairly maligned.
Vital Statistics
PATTY HEARST
Atlantic Entertainment Group
Director: Paul Schrader
Producer: Marvin Worth
Screenplay: Nicholas Kazan
(Based on a book by Patricia Campbell Hearst and Alvin Moscow)
Cinematography: Bojan Bazelli
Editing: Michael R. Miller
Cast: Natasha Richardson, Ving Rhames, Dana Delany, William Forsythe, Frances
Fisher, Jodi Long, Olivia Barash, Marek Johnson, Kitty Swink, Peter Kowanko, Tom
O’Rourke, Scott Kraft