Guerrilla: The Taking Of Patty Hearst

This watchable and provocative documentary by Robert Stone (Radio Bikini) was originally titled Neverland: The Rise and Fall of the Symbionese Liberation Army, which gives some idea of Stone’s approach to the west-coast radicals who kidnapped newspaper heiress and Berkeley undergrad Patricia Hearst in 1974. He’s especially interested in how effectively the SLA manipulated the media with its rhetoric when its political strategies, articulated by two former members in recent interviews, were both muddled and makeshift. (Hearst, who shocked America by declaring herself a member of the SLA and participating in one of its bank holdups, is rather scornfully viewed as going with the flow.) There are some instructive lessons here, but ironically few of them are political. 90 min. (JR)

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