Weather Underground

Year: 2002

Grade: B-

Country: USA

Director: Green/Siegel

Review

extremists really piss me off. here you have a documentary which follows the history of the weathermen, a group of hippies who, during the 60s and 70s, sought to overthrow the paradigm because they disagreed with american aggression abroad (especially the vietnam war). they rationalized their extreme point of view by contending that inaction against violence is its own violence and that means violence against the state is justified. they eventually did all the stereotypical extremist hippie stuff – lots of drugs, free sex, and bombing institutions of power. after an accident with a bomb which killed several of their own members, they determined that bombing innocent civilians was not morally acceptable and that they should, henceforth, take measures to clear the area of civilians before the bombs were detonated. much of their philosophy is extremely flawed and misguided and represents, to me anyway, the very worst of moral superiority. one SDS (students for a democratic society – the group from which the radical weathermen split) member compared them to the hitlers and stalins of the world, an apt analogy in that both hitler and the weathermen had grand schemes for the world which involved the violent overthrow of a certain group. the film does a pretty good job of showing all sides of the thinking that went into forming the philosophy of the weathermen (they weren’t that progressive, apparently, because if they were they would have called themselves the weatherpeople, but i digress…).

the film overused the first track on aphex twin’s selected ambient vol. 2, a track which was also used on another documentary called devil’s playground. fitting. fucking extremists should just be killed.