La Commune (Paris 1871) (2000)
British filmmaker Peter Watkins signature style blends historical events with formalist storytelling and dramatic reenactments.
That strategy was manifest in his 1966 BBC mockumentary The War Game, which presented such a real portrait of nuclear disaster that the network deemed it too horrifying for broadcasting.
His 1974 biopic on legendary Norwegian painter Edvard Munch was a cinéma vérité portrait, with characters staring into the camera.
The Commune, Watkins 2000 epic, restages the rise and fall of the Paris Commune, a socialist regime that briefly took power in France during the late 19th century before its members were brutally massacred.
TV reporters interviewed working-class citizens and state-sponsored media pundits issuing anti-communard propaganda.
Running six hours, Watkins’ innovative take focused on the role of modern media in shaping perception of reality (and thus reality itself) of how people regard political movements.
The epic serves as useful reminder of the inevitable impact of the past on the present through the prism of mass media, which can both illuminate and distort historical events.
