Exploring the radical docudramas of Peter Watkins
Having a major influence on John Lennon isn’t something many creative minds can say, but it applies directly to docudrama pioneer Peter Watkins, who was name-dropped by the musician as an inspiration behind his well-publicised means of protestation.
During his bed-in period, Lennon was asked what kickstarted his campaign, and he responded by saying, “the thing that really struck it off was a letter we got from a guy called Peter Watkins, who made a film called The War Game.” Describing it as “like getting your inductions papers for peace,” Lennon wasn’t the only one swayed by the filmmaker’s seminal work.
Blurring the lines between fact and fiction to create new levels of realism and immersion is commonplace today, but Watkins was a true trailblazer. From The Diary of an Unknown Soldier in the late 1950s through to Culloden, The War Game, Privilege, and Gladiator in the following decade, he carved out a distinctive style that’s bled through into countless other forms of cinema.
Combining historical re-enactments, newsreel footage, voiceover, handheld camerawork, amateur actors, and regular breaks of the fourth wall, watching a Watkins film was an unmistakable experience that keeps one foot firmly in reality while simultaneously casting its gaze at the what-ifs of any given situation, offering searing insight into past, present, and future socio-political issues to render them as relevant as the day they happened, or in some cases could happen.
Refusing to hold the hand of his audience, Watkins’ filmography was defined by asking big thematic questions and deconstructing the ‘official’ versions of events, with the rise of mass media one of his favoured targets. Fears over nuclear war, political oppression, police brutality, the rights of workers, and the plight of the teenager were all present and accounted for, and he never pulled any punches in telling the story exactly how he wanted to tell it.
Culloden and The War Game may have told tales separated by centuries, but each of them was unmistakably clear in its anti-war sentiment. The former focuses on the titular battle of 1746, while the latter suggests the worst-case scenario of all-out nuclear conflict, treating both with a fresh pair of stylistic eyes to paint a canvas that had been well-worn across all forms of media in distinct new colours.
The War Game depicted the hypotheticals of Britain being attacked by the Soviet Union. It proved so provocative that it was pulled from its originally agreed broadcasting date after it was “judged by the BBC to be too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting” before promptly making a mockery of that assessment by winning the Academy Award for ‘Best Documentary Feature’ in 1966.
The following year’s Privilege was Watkins’ spin on the biopic that followed a pop star being manipulated to help control the masses, while both The Gladiators and Punishment Park aimed both barrels at the political regime in their depictions of sponsored ‘peace games’ and state-sponsored hunting of so-called ‘radicals’, respectively.
Watkins may have failed to recapture that early incendiary form the longer his career progressed, with his last two films – 1994’s The Freethinker and 2000’s The Commune – running for an exorbitant 276 and 375 minutes. Less was definitely more, but his impact on the docudrama and the legacy that stemmed from it was already well-secured long before then.
