The film Unabomber left me disappointed

 The film Unabomber left me disappointed

 For 15 years, we gathered on Mondays near Baltimore’s prison complex, which included a building where executions took place.  This vigil was organized by the Jonah House and Viva House Catholic Worker.  It ended when the State of Maryland on May 2, 2013, repealed the death penalty. This was a great and hard-fought victory.

 

  On Netflix I watched the 2026 film Unabomber, directed by Janus Metz Pedersen about Ted Kaczynski. The film stars Russell Crowe, as Professor Henry Murray, Annabelle Wallis, his assistant, Christiano Morgan, and Shailene Woodley, as an FBI agent.

 

In 1958, 16-year-old math wizard, Theodore Kaczynski enrolled at Harvard University and Murray and Morgan got Ted involved in a series of psychological experiments. The film tries to make the point that these experiments caused young Ted to become isolated from his friends and family and to develop a strong opposition to a technological society.

 

First, we see that Ted’s relationship with Professor Murray ended badly. Next, Ted comes home to Chicago for a visit with his mom and dad, Polish immigrants, and his younger brother David.  At dinner, he insults his father for being a working-class stiff.  Having grown up in Erie, PA in a Polish American family and neighborhood, I found the scene insulting.  Almost all the dads in the neighborhood were working class, and they and their spouses emphasized to their children the importance of getting an education. 

 

After Ted graduates from Harvard, the film moves into the 1990s as the FBI is befuddled by terror attacks by the Unabomber.  Eventually, the Unabomber issues a manifesto, and despite arguments against publishing it, it appears in The Washington Post. And David recognizes that the manifesto was written by his brother. Again, the film is misleading as the agency is reluctant to believe the brother.

  It gets more ahistorical as Agent Miller goes to Montana and sees Ted come out of his cabin with a rifle. And the tension mounts, but Ted does not shoot her.

 Getting back to reality, in 2003 at a Lutheran Church in south Baltimore, David Kaczynski and Bud Welch (whose daughter was killed in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing), told the audience that capital punishment does not bring healing or peace to families affected by violence. In fact, Welch wanted to kill Timothy McVeigh but eventually rejected revenge.  David told us he contacted the FBI to indicate he knew the Unabomber. But he wanted a promise that the government would not seek the death penalty. The FBI agreed but later reneged on the promise.  

As a film buff, I accept the idea of dramatizing a true story.  But in this film the premise is that Ted became the Unabomber because of the experiments at Harvard. To make this argument, the film ignores the back story that Ted went to Michigan University and got an MA and Ph.D. Then he taught at Berkeley in the late 1960s and did not move to a cabin in Montana until 1971.

 

I do not know what caused Ted to send letter bombs to scientists. I do question the idea of sending a sixteen-year-old to a university quite far from his family. But I think a better film would have left the question of how Ted became the Unabomber unanswered. Kagiso, Max

 

Donations can be sent to Max Obuszewski, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206, Baltimore, MD 21212.  Ph.: 443-761-5899; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/.

 

 "The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs