In the event you take a look at the historical past of cults, particularly those that started to flourish in America within the Nineteen Seventies, after they’d absorbed numerous the New Age mystical we’re-all-Jesus let-your-primal-feelings-out messianic psychedelic trappings of the ’60s, you’ll see that nearly each cult has two issues in widespread. They’re led by snake-oil gurus who find yourself sucking the wealth out of their followers. And most of the time, the leaders, who set themselves up as deities (deity being a stage above rock star), use the followers for sexual favors.
So a part of what’s disturbing about “The Leader,” a drama concerning the notorious Heaven’s Gate cult, is that Marshall Applewhite, the elfin demagogue who dominated the cult for 25 years, finally main 38 of his followers in a suicide pact on March 22 and 23, 1997 (the most important mass suicide ever dedicated on American soil — although Jonestown, with 900 useless, remains to be the worldwide champion), didn’t pursue both of these targets. For a very long time, the cult barely had sufficient money to get by, and even when the cash did begin coming in from Applewhite’s acolytes, it wasn’t exorbitant; it simply funded their meals and housing.
So far as intercourse goes, Applewhite, born in Texas in 1931, was a homosexual man who was afraid of his sexuality. He’d misplaced a instructing job in 1970 after having a relationship with a male scholar, and although he sometimes gave into temptation, he largely tried to tamp his needs down into a spot the place they didn’t exist. And that’s what he requested of his followers. The members of the Heaven’s Gate cult had been required to be celibate, and one of many targets of the cult was to get rid of gender. All of them wore their hair on this odd asexual pageboy reduce, which made them appear like nerd aliens. That appeared acceptable, since UFO theology was an enormous a part of their dream. There’s a video of the Heaven’s Gate followers shortly earlier than their suicide (it’s recreated in “The Leader”), the place they’re sitting of their darkish smock outfits, beaming like schoolchildren who assume that is the happiest second of their lives, and it’s one of many creepiest stuff you ever noticed.
“The Leader,” as a dramatic expertise, is creepy as hell, however as written and directed by Michael Gallagher, it’s additionally genuine and sharply informed, and it’s inquiring about the suitable issues — specifically, why would individuals descend to this, and what, if something, does it should say about us? It’s clear, from the film, that the members of the Heaven’s Cult had been a bunch of sick puppies, and so was Marshall Applewhite, who’s performed by Tim Blake Nelson in a refined and unnerving efficiency of insidious wackadoo power. He reveals you that this man, generally known as Herff, didn’t have all his marbles (he hears voices), but additionally that he grooved on the ability of all of it. Nelson, in a shaggy thatch of hair, with a beatific leer, speaks in a drawl that’s extra pronounced than the one Applewhite had, and that offers him a huckster-preacher vibe, however his Herff can also be a crackpot believer in his personal malarkey, which he roughly makes up as he goes alongside. Why do his followers comply with observe him? As a result of following is the purpose. There’s no intercourse or money-grubbing or anything worldly on the facet. That’s what will get below your pores and skin.
The Heaven’s Gate cult truly had two leaders. Applewhite’s associate in glittery-eyed Pied Piper madness is Bonnie Nettles (Vera Farmiga), a modest, well-mannered nurse he meets within the early ’70s on a hospital psych ward, shortly after he has swallowed a bottle of capsules. He sizes her up as a misplaced soul (she’s an sad homemaker), and the 2 kind a bond that feels sexual in depth, besides that it stays platonic. Herff attracts her into his “philosophy” of aiming for the “Next Level” of being, which sounds just like the hokum it’s, besides that everybody within the ’70s was beginning to discuss this manner. It was the jabber of Scientology and est and the Moonies and the Hare Krishna and primal remedy and the human-potential motion. Make your self a greater you. (It has by no means gone away.) Collectively, Applewhite and Nettles go on the highway, surviving on free dinners rolls at eating places, skipping out on motel payments, however they imagine in one thing in one another. They appear to each know that they’ve bought what it takes to be the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker of extraterrestrial New Age fascism.
As they collect followers, most of whom appear as misplaced and alienated as members of the Manson Household, the 2 begin to name themselves Do and Ti (pronounced “dough” and “tea”), they usually evolve a perception system that’s a fractured fairy story of transcendence, one which fuses the earthly renunciation of Christianity with the crazy utopianism of the UFO trustworthy. In line with Do and Ti, our our bodies are mere “vehicles,” and should all the time be known as automobiles. The members of Heaven’s Gate are simply ready to ascend to the Subsequent Degree, which can occur when the UFOs arrive, taking them — or, fairly, their beings free of their automobiles — aboard.
“The Leader” is essentially the most potent drama I’ve seen about life inside a cult since “Martha Marcy May Marlene.” Michael Gallagher, who has a following on YouTube, shot it in a documentary-like fashion, with eerie re-creations of Applewhite’s space-cadet movies, and the drama is rigorous and voyeuristic in a captivating method. What’s uncommon and disquieting about “The Leader” is that it doesn’t inform its story primarily by means of the eyes of some harmless one who will get drawn into the cult. Our level of identification is the leaders — Do and Ti, united of their loopy energy recreation. The film asks us to stare at Tim Blake Nelson and his implacable raffish glee, and Vera Farmiga and her “Handmaid’s Tale” sternness, and divine what was happening inside these two imperious damaged crackpots.
However we do get to know a few of the cult members. Jim Parsons, in an extremely spectacular efficiency, is Warren, the cult’s most devoted member, who has put his habit to alcohol and intercourse behind him by renouncing his very identification. Parsons reveals you the fearfully obedient soldier and the wounded automotive wreck inside. And Simon Rex and Grace Caroline Currey make their mark as two new recruits who don’t know what they’re moving into. They attempt to be good members, however they fall right into a sexual affair, which leads to essentially the most horrifying masochistic punishment I’ve ever seen in a cult drama.
“The Leader” actually is a horror film — a fright movie of the soul, or of what’s left of it when you give your self over to an “ideal” of life that’s actually a type of loss of life. The mass suicide of the Heaven’s Gate cult, which Applewhite timed to the arrival of the Hale-Bopp comet (in accordance with his logic, the comet was bringing the alien spaceship with it), is staged with a terrifying matter-of-factness. Every of the cult members went knowingly, consuming a container of applesauce spiked with phenobarbital, and Applewhite did too, although the film phases his suicide as a catharsis of dread. What does all of this should say about us? Perhaps it’s a warning about how the impulse to observe can take away the you from your self.
