Uncovering the Weather Underground

It’s hard for many veteran leftists to uncurl their lips on hearing the phrase “Weather Underground.” A home-grown terrorist movement with pretensions to Third World revolution, it grabbed the headlines with bombings punctuating ’70s history and stigmatized the entire range of left activism until its leaders surrendered in disarray.

Even for the Weather-weary, though, the new film "The Weather Underground" by Sam Green and Bill Siegel can’t help but hold fascination. Green and Siegel, who were both children in the ’70s, have made a feature documentary that goes behind the mask of terror. The result is an illuminating footnote on history, and also a thought-provoking insight into extremist belief communities.

The Weather Underground is not a wide-angle history film; it doesn’t even claim to give you movement history. Instead, it provides a platform for its central characters -- members of the underground -- to recall and reflect on their own lives. The result is character studies that are both uncommented and unvarnished, and an insider’s tale of group madness. “When you feel you have right on your side,” says one-time Weatherman Brian Flanagan, standing in the bar he now owns, “you can do some horrific things.” And some ludicrous ones.

The film is organized chronologically, with flash-forwards to today as middle-aged Weatherfolk -- many of them still social activists -- retell their memories. The story begins in 1968, with the disillusionment prompted by escalation of the war in Vietnam, assassinations, and splintering of left groups. The impossibly young activists, still vibrant in the Ektachrome tints of that era’s film, glitter with the charisma that Todd Gitlin recalls. He likens them to Bonnie and Clyde, and says, with a shrug: “They were into youth, exuberance, sex, drugs. They wanted action.”

It continues with a failed search for the working class; for an end to monogamy through group sex; and an end to the state through bombings. The New York townhouse explosion that killed three Weathermen as they were preparing bombs sends the rest underground and puts a damper on grand terrorist schemes. Until they surrender -- lost in America but still outwitting the hapless FBI -- they execute publicity-seeking attacks on symbolically rich sites like the Pentagon, State Department, police and state government offices, and ITT and Gulf Oil headquarters.

What propelled them, other than the thrill of attention? They each refer to the revolutionary tenor of the time, and to their revulsion at American empire. “Doing nothing in a period of violence is a form of violence,” Naomi Jaffe explains quietly. “The Vietnam War made us all a little crazy,” one says, and another seconds it. “None of us thought we were gonna live through it,” says Bill Ayers.

No matter what, the filmmakers resolutely avoid commenting on their central characters; they don’t contradict, contextualize, celebrate or snicker. And so they build, through the characters revealed in these interviews, a picture of a group whose self-delusion deepened until underground life sealed their isolation. The occasional glimpses of the tumultuous moment -- shooting of a Vietnamese in the street, dying U.S. soldiers, presidents pontificating -- are gestures to headlines of the times. More importantly, as they exploit the privilege they are so embarrassed by with every media appearance and symbolic act, they testify to the frenetically mediacentric society in which the Weatherfolk were media stars.

Bernardine Dohrn was the star of the Weathermen then, and she’s the star of this movie. Unrepentant and self-assured, she provides guided tours of once-hot spots, including her first hideout (but doesn’t share how she managed to stay underground for a decade). Her husband, Bill Ayers, walks over the ground he once rioted over in Chicago. Like Naomi Jaffe, they are proud of having been part of a worldwide revolutionary movement. But they never explain exactly how they were part of such a movement, other than in their minds. (They do claim more of an alliance with the Black Panthers, but it’s more than others would acknowledge.) In this film, as in life, the Weatherfolk speak mostly to each other.