Anyone who lived in the Philadelphia area in the mid-1980s will remember the police confrontation with the radical group MOVE on May 13, 1985, that resulted in the deaths of eleven group members, including children, and an out-of-control fire that destroyed multiple city blocks in the West Philly neighborhood. Those who don’t remember may find even more bewildering the sequence of events that resulted in such a calamity. This documentary tells the story extremely well using, exclusively, period footage, primarily local news coverage, film of the hearings held by the city in the months after the confrontation, and the videotaped deposition of thirteen-year-old Michael Moses Ward, who had been living in MOVE house with his mother and survived the conflagration.
Told sequentially, the film provides some of the history of MOVE (not an acronym), which formed in the early 1970s. Under the guidance of spiritual leader John Africa (whose followers adopted the same last name), the group espoused an anti-authority, pro-self sufficiency philosophy and rejected most modern technology, though not autos. To many people, they just seemed dirty and odd. To their neighbors, they were a nuisance. To the police, they represented a threat, and a 1978 confrontation with the group left one officer dead, one MOVE member beaten on camera, and the MOVE “compound” destroyed.
After that, the group relocated to a row house where the 1985 confrontation took place. The last two thirds of the film recount that fateful event, interspersing the news footage with the later testimony in a way that seems as clear as possible and fair to all sides. Today, the MOVE fiasco is a symbol of a decade when the city had reached a low point. It’s still possible to argue about the extent MOVE was to blame and how the city should have handled the group and the plan to evict it from the West Philly row house. It’s unclear what lessons are to be drawn from it. Still, watching it occur is like watching a suspense thriller, albeit a depressing one.
A sad footnote that occurred after the film was complete was the death of Ward, also known as Birdie Africa, in September 2013.
IMDb link
viewed 11/7/13 7:30 pm at Ritz Bourse and posted 11/7/13
Showing posts with label cult. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cult. Show all posts
Friday, November 1, 2013
Friday, September 14, 2012
The Master (**1/2)
Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood, Magnolia), is one of
the few director of whom it can be said both that he brings a
distinctive sensibility to all his films, yet makes films distinctly
different from each other. A common element is the presence of a
character pushed to his limit, often along with a larger-than-life
character who pushes him there. That was the case with There Will Be Blood,
set in the early days of the oil business, and is in the film, set in
mostly in the first years of the 1950s. Pushed to his limits is Freddy
Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), a drifter, alcoholic, sex-obsessive, and World War II veteran who literally wanders into the orbit of larger-than-life Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman).
Said to be inspired by the life of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, Dodd is a man bold enough to introduce himself as a “writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist, a theoretical philosopher, but above all…a man.” The Dodd we encounter in this film has already coalesced into his final form as a guru, though. His philosophies, gathered in a book called The Cause, are an admixture of simple mind-over-matter pronouncements — “man is not an animal” —and metaphysical gobbledegook. His own son says that he “makes hit up as he goes along,” but his second wife (Amy Adams) seems simultaneously to be a true believer and to understand that “The Cause,” as it is called in the movie, is a self-creation. Assistant, partner, moral compass, power behind the throne, and more, this character intrigues in Adams’s relatively few scenes. Though we aren’t meant to take the Cause seriously, and it’s doesn’t seem that Dodd is truly sinister (so the movie is no exposé), the ways such men seduce their followers seems to me an inherently fascinating subject.
Unfortunately, the way Anderson explores this subject is through the lens of the film’s primary protagonist, Quell called a “scoundrel” by Dodd but nonetheless an object of indulgence, curiosity, and attention for him. Quill is not likable; he is not impressive; he is not a villain; he is not even particularly complex; he is alienating rather than charismatic, as the Daniel-Day Lewis character in There Will Be Blood was charismatic. In short, he is a difficult, unpleasant character to follow for two and a half hours. Though I gather that we are supposed to become involved in his efforts to overcome the darker parts of his nature, and the efforts of Dodd and, to a lesser extent, his followers, I did not find myself absorbed by this quest, though individual scenes between the two of them, which often are like a strange kind of therapy, are intense and well done. I will also concede that Phoenix’s portrayal is consistent and skillful, even down to his odd posture, and my reaction to the character, that he seems incredibly creepy and repellent, subjective, as was my feeling that Phoenix seemed too old to portray the character. (A subplot is Quell continuing longing for a girl he knew when she was 16; it’s unclear how old Quell is supposed to have been when he knew her, but the flashback scenes make no attempt to make Phoenix look younger. Also, the plot fits better if we assume Quell was about 20, not 30 or so, when he courted the girl and went off to join the Navy. But Quell/Phoenix looks too old to have been 20 around 1941.)
In a way, figures like Dodd (or Hubbard) represent the seemingly very American ability to turn imagination, even an amalgamation of psychobabble and pseudoscience, into reality. No doubt it’s unfair of me to want the movie to be Elmer Gantry, i.e. more about the spiritual leader as huckster. No doubt Anderson is a very skillful filmmaker. His camerawork, especially in shooting wide vistas, is memorable, and there is an intensity he brings to his storytelling. But, no doubt, I found The Master only intermittently spellbinding.
IMDb link
viewed 11/14/12 5:15 pm at Ritz 5 and reviewed 11/15–11/17/12
Said to be inspired by the life of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, Dodd is a man bold enough to introduce himself as a “writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist, a theoretical philosopher, but above all…a man.” The Dodd we encounter in this film has already coalesced into his final form as a guru, though. His philosophies, gathered in a book called The Cause, are an admixture of simple mind-over-matter pronouncements — “man is not an animal” —and metaphysical gobbledegook. His own son says that he “makes hit up as he goes along,” but his second wife (Amy Adams) seems simultaneously to be a true believer and to understand that “The Cause,” as it is called in the movie, is a self-creation. Assistant, partner, moral compass, power behind the throne, and more, this character intrigues in Adams’s relatively few scenes. Though we aren’t meant to take the Cause seriously, and it’s doesn’t seem that Dodd is truly sinister (so the movie is no exposé), the ways such men seduce their followers seems to me an inherently fascinating subject.
Unfortunately, the way Anderson explores this subject is through the lens of the film’s primary protagonist, Quell called a “scoundrel” by Dodd but nonetheless an object of indulgence, curiosity, and attention for him. Quill is not likable; he is not impressive; he is not a villain; he is not even particularly complex; he is alienating rather than charismatic, as the Daniel-Day Lewis character in There Will Be Blood was charismatic. In short, he is a difficult, unpleasant character to follow for two and a half hours. Though I gather that we are supposed to become involved in his efforts to overcome the darker parts of his nature, and the efforts of Dodd and, to a lesser extent, his followers, I did not find myself absorbed by this quest, though individual scenes between the two of them, which often are like a strange kind of therapy, are intense and well done. I will also concede that Phoenix’s portrayal is consistent and skillful, even down to his odd posture, and my reaction to the character, that he seems incredibly creepy and repellent, subjective, as was my feeling that Phoenix seemed too old to portray the character. (A subplot is Quell continuing longing for a girl he knew when she was 16; it’s unclear how old Quell is supposed to have been when he knew her, but the flashback scenes make no attempt to make Phoenix look younger. Also, the plot fits better if we assume Quell was about 20, not 30 or so, when he courted the girl and went off to join the Navy. But Quell/Phoenix looks too old to have been 20 around 1941.)
In a way, figures like Dodd (or Hubbard) represent the seemingly very American ability to turn imagination, even an amalgamation of psychobabble and pseudoscience, into reality. No doubt it’s unfair of me to want the movie to be Elmer Gantry, i.e. more about the spiritual leader as huckster. No doubt Anderson is a very skillful filmmaker. His camerawork, especially in shooting wide vistas, is memorable, and there is an intensity he brings to his storytelling. But, no doubt, I found The Master only intermittently spellbinding.
IMDb link
viewed 11/14/12 5:15 pm at Ritz 5 and reviewed 11/15–11/17/12
Friday, May 4, 2012
The Sound of My Voice (***1/4)
Some actresses complain about the dearth of good parts for women. Brit Marling writes them for herself. In Another Earth,
she was an ex-offender hoping for a trip to an alternative future. In this, one of two film’s she’s written with director Zal Batmanglij, she’s a purported visitor from the future, or charlatan,
maybe, preparing a cult-like group of followers to return with her to the year 2054.
The key characters, though, are a couple (Christopher Denham, Nicole Vicius) who’ve been admitted to her circle but are actually aspiring journalists aiming to expose her as a fraud. As Another Earth used its nominally sci-fi premise as a way to explore the guilt felt by its main character, The Sound of My Voice uses its cult story to explore the issue of trust. At the same time, it functions as a tight little mystery.
viewed 5/9/12 7:20 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 5/10–11/12
Friday, October 28, 2011
Martha Marcy May Marlene (***3/4)
I know this indie drama was effective because I was still a little unsettled ten or fifteen minutes after it ended. It would be incorrect to say it was about a cult (a word the film itself avoids), or why someone would join one. It is instead about a transition back to normalcy; the curious title intends to evoke the fragile state of one uncertain of herself. If this were a war film one would say it is about PTSD. Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) has just left, maybe escaped, after a time with the group, and is staying with her sister (Sarah Paulson).
Flashbacks depict the place she has just left, an upstate New York farmhouse. The dozen or so folks there seem like latter-day flower children practicing a back-to-nature sort of self-reliance. John Hawkes plays the leader, whose palpable creepiness (to me, anyway) is the only sign, at first, of things gone amiss. You’ve seen these kind of flashbacks before, where the scene in the present merges into a similar-looking one in the past. But first-time writer-director Sean Durkin does it about as well as I’ve seen, so that it takes you a few seconds to realize the scene has moved from the sister’s house to the farmhouse. As for Martha, the past blurs with the present, and reality with paranoia.
Durkin gives hints about Martha’s back story in her interactions with the sister, who is living with her fiancé (Hugh Dancy). The story is about family dynamics and Martha’s erratic behavior. But the mood comes close to psychological horror. Or suspense, more than horror. In any case, Durkin and Olsen give us one of the most subtle, yet gripping portrayals of a damaged individual.
viewed 8/22/11 at Ritz East [PFS screening]
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