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18 out of 19 people found the following review useful:
Great Film - Important Message Against the War Machine, 27 October 2003
Author: Bill Hazel from Detroit!

The Weather Underground presents a well-balanced view of the militant faction of the 1960s anti-war group that orchestrated a series of direct actions (including bombings) in protest of the Vietnam War and American imperialism.

To its credit, the film is not overly sympathetic to the members of the group. Rather, it portrays them in a direct and logical manner that tends to explain their more violent activities as the desperate attempts of extremely dedicated activists to engender dynamic change in lieu of those "publicly-sanctioned" methods which they felt were not sufficiently powerful to stop the war machine (i.e., non-violent demonstrations). It should be mentioned that none of the group's bombings resulted in injuries to people, with the notable exception of 3 WU members who were killed accidentally while making a bomb that was destined for an ill-advised attack on military personnel - a seminal moment the the organization's history that "opened their eyes" to the darkness they were headed towards. One cannot help but wonder what would have transpired had that attack been carried out - this is the chilling central lesson of the film, poignantly described by one former member who plainly stated that "the violence didn't work."

At the screening I attended the audience had the good fortune of listening to two of the Weather Underground's key members in person: Bernadette Dohrn and Bill Ayers. This proved particularly interesting, as both individuals, while still espousing their anti-militarism/anti-imperialism views to strong effect, did not express the need for radical tactics as one would imagine they may (given the current climate gripping the nation). Instead, they talked of engaging the issue through learning, organized activism, personal growth and social consciousness/responsibility.

It is this dialectic that makes this film so important right now, and I think that the directors have made an important step towards educating Americans in the subject of social awareness. My only complaint is that this lesson needs a counterpoint, something to break the ultimately sad feeling that one is left with when the screen flickers off at the end. Perhaps if viewed in tandem with a film that explores the victories that have been made through non-violent protest "The Weather Underground" can achieve its best potential.

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21 out of 25 people found the following review useful:
Fascinating, 27 August 2004
Author: jc_aston from Wales, UK

Little has been written in the popular media about the Weathermen. My only knowledge came from a dictionary of hip neologisms and a well-known pocket-sized journal which conflated them with the Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army and the killing by one of it's ex-members 10 years later, after he had joined a completely different group. A nice try to produce the mental impression 'tainted, don't believe in', but this film reverses it by trusting you with the details. It contains great archive footage. Crucially, it contains no noodling left-wing speeches, but shows people who were completely unimpressed with the Weathermen, and one member who seems to have rejected the methods they used. Despite these differences, all are given an equal chance to explain their motivations, and that makes it a really fascinating documentary. Steal this film.

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15 out of 18 people found the following review useful:
The calm after the storm, and the myriad lessons drawn., 28 August 2004
Author: Sinnerman from Singapore

A friend of mine wrote:

"I have a very sparse knowledge of (The Weather Underground's) particular historical context. My interest here is more in terms of how the film was put together, what the archival footage and interviews with former Weathermen members NOW reveals to us about their sentiments, their motivations, their actions."

My sentiments exactly. Like the above well put thought piece, I foresee others more eloquent than myself will lavish raves (or rants) on The Weather Underground. Love it or hate it, you decide. That said, I shall post here, my expanded take.

There is an incredibly balanced portrayal of these people in The Weather Underground. Though objectivity is arguably frown upon in documentaries, this film worked for me. For it allowed me to understand the information presented (Yes, I am just as ignorant about 60s/70s American history) and it helped me in making my own conclusion.

This documentary shed interesting light on its subjects. The Weathermen failed in their radical movement. However turbulent that time and place might have been, the corresponding violence initiated by this splinter group did not contribute as much to the winding down of the Vietnam War, as did the natural progression of other events. Ironically, the continual pacifistic action from "the rest" arguably effected more of a shift in that period's socio politics (albeit gradually) than these radicals could ever accomplish.

One telling line from Mark Rudd, one of the movement's members said:

"I cherished my hate as a badge of moral superiority"

Therein lies the danger.

When smart, idealistic (more often than not, good intentioned as well) individuals share this belief that they stand on a higher moral ground, that they have a greater, grander purpose in their "calling", they'd willingly go to any lengths in pursuit of their causes. As a result, as one other interviewee put it, extreme violent actions would be considered. Ordinary human lives would ultimately become dispensable. Ergo, the seeds for terrorism has been planted. Mass Murderers are borne out of this ideological conceit.

This cinematic thesis also suggested the generalised "hippie" movement of the 60's/ 70's slapped the faces of the Left real hard. It torn apart the fabric of the nation. Its unachieveable idealism when intermingled with the "violent" dynamics of that turbulent period (Vietnam, Drugs, Hedonism, Multiple Assassinations of Cult of Personalities, Watergate etc) brought about disenchantment and despair. As a result, the pendulum swung and many people ran towards the Right for comfort, denial, escapism and a combination of these mixed feelings.... It gave us Olivia Newton John, Rambo, Ronald Reagan and Jane Fonda - The 80's (yikes).

I am actually quite glad the film ended on an optimistic note. These arguably misguided Weathermen brought with them enormous personal baggages all these years. Yet throughout this film, they were candid about their ideology and reflective about their frailties. Contrary to our natural expectations, these "failures" did not become jaded human beings. They moved on from this checkered past. They continued living their lives. One of them even won Jeopardy (Don't ask).

All in, their humanity shone through.

The Weathermen fought Da Man, and lost. Their strategies might not have been better thought out. Their continuous radical activities might have played into the hands of sophisticated government spin doctors. They might have lost steam due to gradually realising their movement's futility. Yes, their follies were explored abundantly in this movie. But their thoughts and actions were guided by the confusion of those turbulent times (however ironic this last sentence might have sounded). All in, their hearts were in the right place.

On the other hand, if we look beyond the talking heads and read between the lines, we would realise that the questions raised in The Weather Underground are just as relevant today. About 50000 American Soldiers died in the Vietnam War, millions more Vietnamese perished. Who holds more destructive powers? The Weathermen or their "enemy"? Who then were the mass murderers? Look at Iraq today, Afghanistan the day before and Bosnia before that.

Who then are the mass murderers?

In closing, I guess all should know that History is written by the victors. This cinematic document about the "losers" is hence IMO, a most important piece of work. It demands a wider audience and need be accorded higher archival priority than something as insidiously engineered and time wasting as The Fog of War.

For we have much more to learn from this Oscar losing flick.

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12 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
Stormy Yet Clear Documentary, 5 November 2005

Author: Jon Noel Shelton (noelartm@hotmail.com) from Lexington, KY

This is one of the most amazing documentaries I've ever seen. Like a lot of people, I had a low opinion of the Weathermen at the beginning of the film. They seemed like selfish and unsophisticated amateur activists at first, and they were. It took a few of their own being killed by their own device -a homemade bomb- to wake them up. This was the turning point not only for them, but for the film.

Although one is a narrative and the other a documentary, this film makes for a great companion piece with Antonioni's ZABRISKE POINT. I feel like I understand that film so much better now having seen this one. In fact, a couple of WU people appeared in Antonioni's film.

The filmmakers have done an excellent job of capturing the emotional and political climate of the Vietnam War era. This is also the only documentary I have seen that shows Martin Luther King Jr. giving his personal opinion on that war. Also, it's a real ear and eye opener to hear a former Weatherman criticize modern day terrorists like Timothy McVey and those connected with the 9-11 attacks. What gives him the right to come across sounding so smug? Maybe the fact that The Weather Underground never killed anybody. If I could suggest a couple of things to the filmmakers it would be if they had only put the words "CASUALTIES: 0" with each bombing mentioned, it would have been more impressive. And secondly, I wish they'd gone into more detail about how the WU successfully broke Timothy Leary out of prison - but then as a magician never reveals, why should they?

By film's end, I had a totally opposite view of these people than I had at the beginning. So there is a real arc to the film that showed how these people had changed, thus keeping the subjects human rather that mere counter-culture stereotypes. That is a challenge for any documentary filmmaker doing a film on such controversial figures as these.

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9 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
A balanced and engrossing documentary, 9 February 2004

Author: Howard Schumann from Vancouver, B.C.

By the late 1960s, the undeclared war in Vietnam had dragged on for four years despite assurances from our political leaders that we had turned the corner. While massive protest marches brought the issue to the attention of millions, they did little to stop the war. By the early 70s, Richard Nixon was President, the war had escalated to Laos and Cambodia, protesting students were murdered at Kent State, over 30,000 Americans and countless more Vietnamese were dead and there was no end in sight. Impatient with non-violence and radicalized by the continually escalating casualty count and the deafness shown by political leaders, more militant groups such as The Weathermen and Black Panthers began to emerge.

The Weathermen (later The Weather Underground), a radical faction of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), waged a small-scale war against the US government during the 1970s that included bombing of the Pentagon and the Capitol buildings, breaking Timothy Leary out of prison, and evading a nationwide FBI manhunt. Nominated for an Academy Award, directors Sam Green and Bill Siegel's compelling documentary, The Weather Underground, candidly explores the rise and fall of the protest group over a six year period as former members speak about what that drove them to "bring the war home" and landed them on the FBIs ten most wanted list. Though tough questions were not asked, it is nonetheless a balanced and engrossing documentary that puts the last serious student movement in this country into historical perspective without either romanticizing or trivializing it.

Using FBI photographs, news accounts, archival war footage and interviews with Weathermen, SDS leaders, and FBI agents, the documentary explores the limits of protest in a free society and the odds faced by those confronting state and corporate power. Included are scenes of napalm bombing in Vietnam, the murder of Black leaders Fred Hampton and George Jackson, and excerpts of talks by President Nixon. The documentary contains interviews with seven of the original Weathermen, all White, middle class, and well educated: Mark Rudd, Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, Brian Flanagan, Naomi Jaffe, Laura Whitehorn and David Gilbert. These were not weekend hippies or armchair activists but people so committed they cut themselves off from family and friends for nearly a decade.

While the movement began by targeting all (White) Americans, after the explosion of a homemade bomb in Greenwich Village, NY in 1970 killed three of their members, they determined that no one should die as a result of their direct action and no one did. In spite of their belief that civil disobedience was the only alternative, the radicalism of the group alienated many of the people they were trying to convert and forced them to go underground, eventually surrendering to the FBI. Today most are still active in professional capacities in support of these ideals and still convinced of the evils of the capitalist system and the need for genuine democracy.

While their acts can be understood on the basis that it was a time of worldwide revolution and by the failure of marches on Washington to stop the escalation of the war, questions as to whether or not their tactics were effective are still being debated. If nothing else, they exposed the FBI's sinister CointelPro program, an attempt to infiltrate and destroy left wing organizations. Though today the goal of a truly just and humane society seems farther away than ever, as director Siegel pointed out referring to The Weather Underground, "It's clear they didn't have the entire answer, but their impulse that the world can be a more progressive, humane place is worth considering. They made huge mistakes but also had an impulse that things needed to change." The impetus for that change is still alive.

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10 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
Sad, but Important Film, 9 February 2004
Author: (jasonmayer@hotmail.com) from St. Louis, MO

The people in the film made many astute points. Rudd points out toward the end that violence is seen by the public as mental illness or some other chaos unless perpetrated by the government--in that case, violence is normal. I'm glad the Weathermen existed. How flat and hopeless the history of activism would be today without them. It seems that nowadays there is a stereotype of the college leftist activist as being a weak member of a highly privileged class who simply feels guilty about the privilege but is ultimately all talk--wants to keep his wealth in the end. The Weathermen defy this stereotype, putting themselves in full danger of losing everything and accomplishing incredible strategic feats against the government like freeing Timothy Leary and bombing government buildings. I suspect that such a defiance of stereotype is why I, who am college educated and a leftist activist type, never knew the names of the Weathermen, while I knew the names of the most prominent Black Panthers, like Eldridge Cleaver and Bobby Seale. It is a movement almost entirely ignored, even by leftist academics. As the film wraps up, one thing that is telling is that none of the featured Weathermen sold out and became capitalists like so many members of SDS. They're all currently doing things for the good of society even if they're no longer bombing buildings. Also, we learn from the film that people didn't simply lose interest in the left and anti-war/anti-capitalist activism, preferring to embrace the glorious consumerism of Reagan's America. The government beat it out of people. Particularly, the government killed the Weathermen's effectiveness when they forced them underground. Maybe the reason we don't have mass uprisings in the U.S. as in other countries is because our government is the most effectively repressive, it being the most powerful in the world.

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6 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
Troubling but Timely, 1 February 2005
Author: eht5y from United States

The Weatherman faction remains one of the more troubling aspects of the 60s counterculture, for manifold reasons. How did a bunch of well-educated, relatively privileged white kids transform from idealistic protesters for peace into revolutionary terrorists? How were they able to reconcile the inherent contradiction of using violence as a means of pursuing peace? Can violence ever lead to reconciliation, or must it necessarily beget more violence? Sam Green and Bill Siegel's documentary examines all of these questions while remaining remarkably objective. It's a pity that we should feel surprised when a documentary filmmaker actually attempts to uphold the all-but-obsolete standard of objectivity; nevertheless, Green and Siegel deserve to be complimented for presenting a film that is perhaps more a window into the confusion of the times than a history of one peculiar faction of anti-government activists.

Green & Siegel intersperse archival footage with commentary by a number of the Weather Underground's leaders, most of whom retain their revolutionary idealism, even if they have grown circumspect about their methodology.

The film persuasively channels the aura of violence and political unrest that characterized American culture as the first vestiges of counter-cultural idealism gave way first to frustration as the war in Vietnam escalated and then to radicalism as, one after another, civil and human rights activists ranging from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton were brutally silenced, possibly by order of American government agencies such as the CIA, NSA, and FBI. Simultaneously, the tenor of apolitical American life shifted from the good vibrations of psychedelia to paranoia and suspicion. The image of the blissed-out, peace-loving, groovy hippie was replaced by the crazed expression of Charles Manson, whose murderous id made every God-fearing citizen's worst nightmares reality: acid-crazed hippies rampaging the suburbs, butchering innocents in order to start a revolution that would overthrow the status quo. Siegel's and Green's direction employs numerous archival clips that are shockingly graphic, including horrific footage of executions and the bodies of civilian casualties in Vietnam (including many women and small children) and uncensored crime scene photographs from the Tate-LaBianca murders ordered by Charles Manson. The material is somewhat objectionable, but serves the purpose of expressing the climate of fear that made it possible for the likes of Mark Rudd--now a quiet, somewhat melancholy math teacher at a community college in New Mexico--to drop out of sight and begin plotting the violent overthrow of the American political system.

The film presents the Weather Underground as admirable in its courage and determination, but also as terminally misguided. Weatherman leaders repeatedly express their solidarity with the Black Panthers and any revolutionary movement of underclass 'brown or black' people on the planet, but the few Panthers who comment for the film either disavow the Weathermen or express perplexity at their determination to identify with the struggle of blacks and other oppressed ethnicities. As adults, several of the group members acknowledge that, even when they were harassed or beaten by police, they were still treated far more humanely than their black counterparts, and so were never truly in the same struggle as those whom they supported. Some of the members still speak nostalgically about their Weathermen days and claim that they'd do it all over again; others express disdain and regret over their complicity in the deaths of innocents.

As we begin to see history repeating itself in Iraq, 'The Weather Underground' is all too timely. What was different about the 60s and 70s, when so many young people became committed to political activism, from the present, when the numbers are relatively few? Will the process that brought about the Weather Underground repeat itself, or was this particular group less a consequence of the times than of the choices of a few charismatic but misguided and naive twenty-somethings? Did Weatherman make a difference, or was it simply another small piece of the catastrophic collage of the Vietnam era? This film raises more questions than it answers--which is probably what art should always try to do.

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5 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Shows the complexity behind political violence, 5 March 2006

Author: rckspnn from United States

It's incredibly rare to see media depict the real root causes behind acts of "terrorism" during today's War On Terror. While Weather Underground does not glorify its subjects behavior, it does create empathy on the part of the viewer... and that alone is revolutionary at this historical point in time. The Weather Underground portrays a time in America's past when the populace was activated in a way that makes today's peace movement look like armchair intellectuals. Is it really just a draft that determines how aggressive our anti-war stance will be? That is pretty sad, since, if that is true, the anti-war movement isn't actually anti-war at all, it's just anti having to fight in a war. This is a documentary about a group of activists who made a true sacrifice, giving up their own freedom to try and stop a war.

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7 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
Very good documentary about some college kids playing with dynamite, 3 September 2004
Author: sjmcollins-1 from New Orleans

Nicely made documentary about some self-proclaimed "revolutionaries" from the 60's & 70's who, after discovering that breaking windows alone wouldn't overthrow the U.S. government, decide to up the ante by bombing any government building they feel is connected to atrocities committed worldwide. Some nicely balanced insight from directors Sam Green & Bill Siegel, as we see some members of the movement who still believe in what they were fighting for and would do it all again, and others who can barely bring themselves to discuss their part due to their embarrassment. I enjoyed the fact that other voices were heard, and it was acknowledged that these people were very close to engaging in terrorism, rather than just "Vietnam and Nixon made us do it--". Some (possibly) unintentionally funny bits in here as well, as we see nerdy-looking 60's college kids talking about engaging in violence, when they look far more ready to engage in an orgy; and constant talk from former Underground members about how tight they were with the Black Panthers, and not one comment from any Panther member to reciprocate, save one who basically calls them out for being kind of silly.

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3 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
CointelPro inside..., 29 March 2005

Author: ThurstonHunger from Palo Alto, CA, USA

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Hard to separate the film from the content here. I thought the mix of various footage and talking heads worked well. (Although one image, used at least twice crossing a street in the 70's left me perplexed...unless it was footage from one of the Weather(wo)men???)

The use of sound was deft too, never milking an emotion nor stealing a scene. Speaking of items stolen, oustered SDS leader Todd Gitlin, and his take on the happenings was interesting to me. Others on this review board talk about this being a take on history from the loser's point of view, but then he is the one who lost to those losers.

I don't see the Weathermen as losers, but certainly as marginalized folks. Whether by their own in-fighting, by the end of the Vietnam war, by the temptation of time passing, children being born and a general rise in the status of one's status quo. Or perhaps by CointelPro.

I'm not sure what is the most amazing aspect of CointelPro, its insidiousness or its effectiveness. I thought the filmmakers went pretty easy on this...but then again, maybe they felt it was a confluence of factors that helped to quell the Weather.

Still one can imagine that the levels of CointelPro now are so advanced and complicated, that it would be hard to unravel that from the actual DNA of any "revolutionary" going today. Indeed one can assume that CointelPro junior likely generates its own revolutionaries, and counterrevolutionaries and countercounter to the nth... Like some sort of runaway computer program.

Anyways...

I do think the film is a worthwhile watch, although chances are you can easily predict your response from just reading some of the reviews posted here. I will always admire the left's largest weakness...that it can doubt itself. If the film doesn't provoke questions in you, it will at least provoke responses (and hopefully not ready-made ones).

Some of my questions...

1) Is there a difference in violence against corporations versus violence against humans?

2) Does anyone else beside the sons/daughters of the elite have time to think about the "revolution?"

3) What exactly was so great about Timothy Leary? And did he get productized into Zoloft? Or whatever is the latest offensive attack missile into the Drug War? Leary didn't have quite the funding that today's corporate cartels have, but it sounds like he sure did have $ome.

Well that's just my own ongoing boredom/irritation with legal and illegal drugs. Of these three, the most important is the first.

I'm surely no supporter today of the ELF, but one device in the film, of painting action-reponse pictures of the Weatherbombing made violence seem nearly rational. Although nowhere near as methodical as shots of airplanes and their almost pretty dropping of death.

I thought Mark Rudd's comment that all violence is perceived as either criminal and/or insane may not be far off the mark. He talked about this as one way that the Weather was blown over rather than up. But as I get older, it does seem that non-violence is the ONLY way.

Of course, I have my doubts....

6/10

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