Before there was the The Hunger Games, before there was Battle Royale, there was Punishment Park.
Punishment Park is a 1971 Dystopian Mockumentary written and directed by Peter Watkins (of The War Game fame).
The story is set in an Alternate Timeline version of 1970, where American President Richard Nixon has decided to expand and severely escalate the Vietnam War. Faced with a growing domestic anti-war and counter-culture movement as a backlash to this, Nixon, in a case of especially blatant and overt abuse of power, decrees a state of emergency, and activates a post-World War II law (the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950, which is a real life American law by the way
) that allows federal authorities to detain persons judged to be a "risk to internal security" without any oversight from Congress.
Much of America's left wing, be they Civil Rights activists, feminists, conscientious objectors, or communists, are rounded up and arrested en mass, with their resistance towards the war being the official excuse. With prisons and courtrooms being filled with loads of people ending up on the wrong side of this governmental overreach, special "emergency tribunals" are set up, and are essentially given free range to dole out more unusual forms of punishment to lighten the load of the prison system.
One of these unusual measures the so-called "Punishment Park" game, taking place in the Californian desert, which is offered to some of the people otherwise facing a long prison sentence. The rules of Punishment Park are simple: If you can survive for three days while crossing 53 miles of the scorching desert, with no food or water, and reach an flagpole on the other side, while being hunted by National Guardsmen and law enforcement, your sentence will be commuted. If you fail by being "arrested", you will go straight back to jail.
The story is told from the point of view of a British and West German documentary crew, as they follow two groups of poor souls subjected to this fight for lives.
Tropes:
- The Bad Guys Are Cops: They sure are, and they take open and sadistic glee in being the enforcement arm of Nixon's oppressive government.
- Brains Evil, Brawn Good: Invoked. The right-wing corrupt government openly say that the left-wing intelligentsia won't defend their countries.
- The Cake Is a Lie: It is impossible for the prisoners to "win" Punishment Park. Everything is controlled from start to finish by the corrupt government, and they won't allow anyone to win. No matter how well the participants do, they are surrounded by police and hauled off just as they are about to reach the flag. The participants are also told there will be water at the halfway point; this, too, is a lie.
- Defiant to the End: Some of the participants realize the truth that the game is futile and the government simply won't allow anyone to win, and decide to violently resist the law enforcement chasing them if nothing else as a last "fuck you". They all end up getting killed.
- Emergency Authority: The plot is kicked off by Nixon deciding to openly abuse this, in order to enable a large-scale crackdown on the anti-war movement.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Richard Nixon is never directly seen, but his oppressive power grab is directly responsible for all the suffering the film portrays.
- Good Lawyers, Good Clients: The accused group's public defender is a sympathetic and tries his best, but he is faced with the hopeless task of having to argue their against a group of Hanging Judges who already see the accused as guilty and the Constitution as suspended for the time being.
- Kangaroo Court: Essentially what the "emergency tribunals" are. They are exclusively made up of authoritarian right-wing politicians and military officers, and other associated corrupt hicks, who are all openly unsympathetic to the accused and determined to find them guilty no matter what.
- Meta Casting: A large chunk of the cast are not portrayed by trained actors. Many of the arrested left-wing protesters are portrayed by actual anti-war protesters and many of the soldiers are portrayed by actual conservatives, and there was little to no rehearsal involved. Peter Watkins relayed that he at most gave the cast a general idea about what any given scene was about, and asked them to ad-lib their lines based on their personal ideology.
- Morton's Fork: Punishment Park is merely an exercise in breaking people's spirit. The chance of any being acquitted is nil, and anyone still standing at the end is dragged off to jail, with those who protest loudest getting the longest sentences.
- Oppressive States of America: Part of the premise is Nixon turning the US into this, complete with Kangaroo Courts and cruel forms of punishment, against anyone who is against the expanding East Asian war. It is done under a pretense of securing law and order in American, but it is blatantly clear that the real goal is the iron-fisted elimination of any and all kinds of progressive and reformist political movements.
- Smart People Speak the Queen's English: Darkly parodied. The story is primarily populated by Americans, who range from left-wing intellectuals to hicks. However, the film (presumably a documentary) itself is narrated in its entirety by an upper-class English male voice, in an ironic juxtaposition to the brutalities taking places on-screen.
