Educational Media Reviews Online

On May 17, 1968, at the height of the Vietnam conflagration, nine Catholic activists, led by the Jesuit priests Philip Berrigan and his brother Daniel, entered a draft board office in the town of Catonsville, Maryland, and, pushing aside office personnel who tried to stop them, gathered up hundreds of selective service records which they then proceeded to set on fire with homemade napalm. The largely symbolic event captured major media attention and inspired a number of sympathetic imitations in particular, a heightened inquiry into the nature of the war on the part of American Catholics and others in general, and contributed for certain to the skeptical domestic climate that led to the eventual American retreat from the fray. What a shame, then, that director Lynne Sachs didn’t sufficiently trust the important, fascinating tale she has to tell – and tell it like it was! – but instead relates the story impressionistically, employing any number of cinematic techniques better suited to other material.

With 1968 some thirty-five years distant, a good guess is that three-quarters of the film’s putative audience (and more likely seven-eighths of its undergraduate audience!), never having before heard of the Catonsville Nine, will have preferred a more detailed, more straightforwardly told documentary. Instead, we’re told the story mid snippets of homemade movies of the time, row upon row of lovely red (equals blood) flowers, and substantial time out to see Americans walking on the moon (to let us know, this no doubt important, that not all of the country was focused on the war or was willing to go to jail opposing it). Even during the talking head segments, Ms. Sachs’s camera moves distractedly around as though it had the jitters, where one would rather it had set our minds on what the interviewees were saying.

That’s not to say there aren’t many fine moments as well. A woman on the jury that convicted (and who presumably voted guilty) breaks into tears as she explains she never met such courageous people, willing to sacrifice all for what they believed. Also, though the author’s sympathies clearly lie with the nine, the man who prosecuted the case is presented most appealingly. Still, in many places the film raises curiosity and fails to follow through. We’re informed that two of the nine died relatively young – we’re not told any more. Two others didn’t show up to serve their sentences, choosing to go “underground” – again, we’re not told any more. In the absence, then, of another film that tells this story more fully, Ms. Sachs’s film will have to do – but only until that more informative one comes along.