The kidnapping of heiress Patricia Hearst (as the media called her at first) and her transformation into Tania, the urban guerilla, was among the most fascinating spectacles of a socially unsettled era. Director Paul Schrader's dramatization, Patty Hearst (1988), probably provides as much insight as we'll ever have into the psychology of what happened.
For many stretches, the cinematography seems considerably better than the acting or the script, which can be as one-dimensional and preposterous as anything from a Roger Corman youth exploitation flick. But maybe that's the point: these people were ridiculous, and what the public saw on TV was more interesting in some ways than the reality. Hearst's kidnappers, the Symbionese Liberation Army, were the logical end zone of '60s fringe left politics and attitudes. Like Castro without common sense and Che without love, they were a powder keg of ill-digested Third World liberation ideology and hateful rhetoric lit by African-American anger and abetted by white kids who wanted to be black. They were farcical but dangerous in their desire to kill.
Played by Natasha Richardson, Hearst describes herself in the opening voiceover as the outcome of a sheltered environment. Most things came easy to her. “There is little one could do to prepare for the unknown,” she adds. The Hearst of this screenplay seems benign but insubstantial, pliable putty in the hands of tormentors who kept her blindfolded in a closet for weeks, subjecting her to abuse and threats of death before offering her the choice of joining in their delusional if coherent worldview. Patty Hearst is out on DVD.
