DVD of the Week: Patty Hearst

The director Paul Schrader’s overarching theme, throughout his career (which started with “Blue Collar,” from 1978), has been the meaning of life—or, rather, the passion-infused ideals that give life meaning. In “Patty Hearst,” from 1988, which I discuss in this clip, he extends the notion into a domain where it seems not to belong. The subject of the film, of course, is the famous case of the nineteen-year-old heiress who, after her kidnapping in 1974 by a violent political group of ostensible revolutionaries, the Symbionese Liberation Army, joined it, taking part in an infamous bank robbery and other crimes, and was eventually arrested. Schrader—aided greatly by his lead actress, Natasha Richardson—depicts something surprising and extraordinary: the power of absurd ideas and wild rhetoric to possess the imagination. Without sacrificing his critical judgment, Schrader retains a remarkable sympathy both for Hearst and for those who wrenched her from her life and made her—even if in deed only—one of their own.