This film chronicles the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, at the time the 19 years old granddaughter of tycoon William Randolph Hearst, by the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974, and the 17 months she spent with the terrorist group. Schrader portrays Patty as a kind of Alice in Wonderland, depicting the process through which she, victimized by Stockholm Syndrome, started taking part in the group’s operations, such as bank robberies. Unlike most of his protagonists, Schrader’s Patty demonstrates that one’s identity can be reconstructed by events outside one’s control.