...even though this film is talking about events from roughly 1964-1970. So at the time this aired, nothing being shown here was more than ten years in the past. However, American culture had changed so fast that it really seemed like you were looking at an era that was just a blip on a very old radar, yet that brief era brought lasting change. Some people think this film was based on the story of Patty Hearst, but it was actually a very loose account of someone of similar age and life experience to Diana Oughton , who was one of the Weathermen, a domestic terrorist group.
The production boasts a top notch cast, including two veterans - Art Carney and Jane Wyatt as Katherine's upper class parents, an up and coming Sissy Spacek as Katherine, the sassy prep school student turned schoolteacher turned protester and ultimately turned violent revolutionary. Riding the crest of a wave of popularity at that time, Henry Winkler stars as Katherine's long time boyfriend, Bob, who in the end acts like most boyfriends in any era of time, except Bob uses revolutionary excuses to explain why he decides eventually to ghost on Katherine, not just that he is getting bored with her - that would be so bourgeoisie! You know, even though Henry Winker was as famous in the 70s as Bogey was in the 40s, that bushy haircut and mustache they planted on him made him completely unrecognizable to me at the time.
This is really well done as Katherine in present day - about 1970 - is talking about the evolution of her viewpoints. And you think from her very plain clothing and the stool she is sitting on she is probably in prison - I'll let you watch and find out what is really going on. At the same time you see her life unfold. After college she goes to South America to teach children and adults. The local landlord - rather like a feudal lord - objects to Katherine teaching the adults to read and has her kicked out of the country. He is afraid the peasants will become educated and revolt. Back in the states she teaches underprivileged African American kids at an alternative school. That's where she meets Bob. The white power structure strikes back by claiming the school is breaking zoning laws, but the black power movement also weighs in, telling Bob and Katherine that white people should never teach black kids, because it will take the hate out of them and "hate is the strongest weapon we have". So slowly Katherine reaches the conclusion that neither education nor peaceful protest will ever fix anything and takes up arms against "institutions of power". She seems to have forgotten that average Joes who have nothing to do with the power structure she wishes to destroy could get hurt in her revolution.
And then there are mom and dad. They are well off, the film never talks about exactly what Katherine's dad does for a living, and even Katherine has to admit her parents are good people, even though she often describes them as living off of other people's oppression. You can tell they want to help and understand their daughter, but she is just on a different wavelength from them. Tea and cookies are not going to fix this. Likewise Katherine's sister and best college friend take on the traditional 60's role of wife and mother and don't get her either.
I'll let you see how this all turns out, but I thought it was quite powerful, and I was only seventeen at the time it aired. I was somewhat disappointed when I discussed this film with my friends the next day and the only thing they got out of it was how pretty Katherine was at the beginning of the film and how used up she looked at the end. But it was the 70s, the Vietnam war was over, nobody's boyfriend was going to get drafted, and this just seemed like a story from a place long ago and far away to a bunch of teens in 1975.
I'm glad we don't have American young people blowing up buildings and robbing banks or kidnapping heiresses anymore, but it would be nice if they cared about more than the next Marvel comic movie and reality TV, if they weren't all just so passively resigned to their fates and hypnotized by their phones. There must be a happy medium.
