Underground (1976)

Underground (USA, 1976) 83 min color DIR: Emile de Antonio, Mary Lampson, Haskell Wexler. DOP: Haskell Wexler. EDITORS: Emile de Antonio, Mary Lampson. STARRING: Bill Ayers, Kathy Boudin, Emile de Antonio, Bernardine Dohrn, Jeff Jones, Mary Lampson, Haskell Wexler, Cathy Wilkerson. (Sphinx Productions)

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This collaboration between Emile de Antonio, Mary Lampson and Haskell Wexler has been as obscure, elusive and controversial as its subject matter. With Wexler at the camera, the three filmmakers interviewed members of the radical group, The Weather Underground. The liability of the project was that the faces of the five who speak about the organization (Cathy Wilkerson, Jeff Jones, Kathy Boudin, Bernadine Dohrn, Billy Ayers) would not appear on camera. The refusal to photograph their likenesses was-is commonly believed to be due to the fact that the speakers were fugitives from justice, but instead this seems more of an esthetic choice. As Jeff Jones says in the opening, the mesh screen which obscures his features from the viewer is representative of the wall that exists between his organization and “the people”, so they metaphorically try to “talk through it”… to break down the walls, if you will.

The Weather Underground (or, WUO for short) was an extremist group that protested racism as well as the government’s involvement in Vietnam. Their measures went as far as demonstrating with lead pipes in Chicago, and bombing the Capitol building. They had also allegedly bombed a bronze statue in Haymarket Square in 1969- this symbolic statue was of a policeman who was killed the 1889 union strike. The WUO are akin to such groups as The Black Panthers, as they worry many with their controversial “actions not words” stance taken to great degrees. Underground remains an absorbing and haunting allegory of “the great struggle”… not just of the WUO, but of all activists and workers who have combated imperialism over the years. If one can look behind the violence and terror that these radical groups have created, one can see that all they are trying to do is bring some truth to the world… to “free the people” if you will, by showing the lies and corruption of the ruling power. Given the limited amount of images to film, one would expect this to be a very minimalist movie experience. (A favourite motif of Wexler’s is to photograph himself and his fellow filmmakers in the mirror when he has filmed enough of the backs of the heads of the participants.) The film is loaded with historic footage of other activists and scenes of political unrest, as it relates to the conversations of the WUO members.

Each of the five Weather Underground members shares his or her past, illustrating how they came to join these radical causes. We see a generous amount of stock footage: a civil rights protest outside Woolworth’s, archival shots of Malcolm X, McCarthy hearings, 1966 Chicago race riots, the Student Democratic Society, Castro and the Bay of Pigs revolution… collectively these moments had been part of the personal baggage of each of these radicals, warranting their desire to join the fight.

The liberal use of stock footage is not only to break the limitations of seeing the backs of people’s heads for ninety minutes. All of these archival moments are components of the universal great struggle. The WUO is one component of this great struggle, it is also seemingly a component of this movie. The film changes in its last third, as the camera goes outside to interview anonymous activists. With these people sharing their ambitions, the archival footage and the WUO radicals, past, present and future fold into one another. The protest must continue for as long as it has to.

With its refrain, “A New World Coming”, sung by Nina Simone, and hand-drawn credits, it is a personal “home movie”- a hopeful portrait of people who do want to make the world a better place, albeit by unconventional means. Time has of course shown us that the struggle is still necessary, and the extreme acts committed by radicals do not go unpunished. Many political dissidents have had heavy jail time, and as much as people still do picket in the streets, the corrupt establishment remains unchanged.

Underground is a movie made about and by outlaws. All of the parties involved risked jail by collaborating on this project. This picture is not as subversive as one might think, even though it does not condemn the extreme acts of the WUO. One approaches the film with a bit of uncertainty because of its subject matter and its potentially limited esthetics, but the result is a saddening and haunting movie experience. Nina Simone’s bluesy voice echoes in our mind long after seeing this film- a new world still has to emerge from the labours of those who have made extreme sacrifices to change it.

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Excerpted from an article on Emile de Antonio, originally published in Vol #1, Issue #14, (“Back to the 70s”). This film was once only obtainable from bootleg operations, including good old 5 Minutes To Live, but has since been released on the four-film set, Emile de Antonio: Films of the Radical Saint.