The Leader

Gobsmacking performances, a dynamite, well researched script and attention to humanity and emotional resonance make Michael J. Gallagher’s The Leader one to see. The film, entered in the “Spotlight Narrative” category, had its world premiere at Tribeca Festival. Gallagher who acutely shepherded his actors to create authentic, heart-felt, spot-on performances hits it out of the ballpark. His unsparing and human examination of the Heaven’s Gate cult makes the film imminently watchable.

In the talk back after the screening Gallagher referenced the massive amount of material (videos, documents, writings, news stories, etc.) he researched. He did this to come to grips with how and why thirty-nine cult members who lived near him would unalive themselves in the largest mass suicide on American soil. After the project started, stopped, started, Gallagher continued his research. By degrees, he brought his cast onboard securing Tim Nelson Blake who did his own extensive research. After 10 years they completed the film. However, Gallagher affirms the difficulty of understanding the “why” of the cult’s message or actions. Likewise, many psychologists and researchers have attempted to analyze what the Heaven’s Gate cult meant to itself. The story continues for some members who didn’t join “the evacuation”(unaliving), and still carry the torch believing in the cult and its leaders.

The story begins with the meeting of Applewhite and Nettles

Gallagher’s storytelling begins with the formation of the group by Marshall Herff Applewhite (Tim Blake Nelson) and Bonnie Lu Nettles (Vera Farmiga). In following their journey to the end of their lives Gallagher explores the macabre behaviors and polemic of the cult. To do this he effectively varies his cinematography i.e. close-ups in interview format vs. illustrative scenes between cult members. He moves fluidly from past to present in a well-honed script to reveal how Applewhite and Nettles gained a following. Some stayed with them for 20 years.

Applewhite and Nettles meet in a hospital.There, Nettles gets Nelson’s Applewhite to swallow a tube to pump his stomach. He’s ingested pills to kill himself. Gallagher suggests Bonnie’s comforting, kind manner stimulates him toward life. Cleverly, the filmmaker begins at this point of crisis for Applewhite and sets the stage for the end result coming full circle decades later when Applewhite convinces others to “shed their vehicles” and “connect with the next level” (kill themselves). But for Bonnie’s interference to save Applewhite’s life years earlier, the cult never would have existed.

Bonnie’s overall influence

As the filmmaker chronicles their travels, we note Bonnie influences and drives their success. When she sees that their message doesn’t draw people in, she encourages Applewhite to change and evolve a message which works. They continue to change it incorporating New Age ideas of consciousness, aliens and mysticism to attract “students” to their classes. Eventually, they rework their message so that they are extraterrestrial beings sent to Earth to guide humanity to the next level of existence. The message appeals. Those who join them, leave their families, disengage from society and former friends and wait to be evacuated from the planet.

Importantly, The Leader sensitively chronicles the “how” of what the group did. Gallagher does compress timely events. He shortens the time of Bonnie’s death to the group’s communal removal to “the next level.” In actuality, over a decade passes. Thus, the film’s factual basis has been altered for storytelling purposes.

Gallagher centers on feelings

If anything, much of what Gallagher suggests centers on feelings and emotions. For example, Applewhite continued to tweak the cult’s message after Bonnie’s death. To keep them close he symbolically marries each member. Though her death may have contributed to their decision to join her at “the next level” it isn’t the only reason they unalive themselves. Gallagher raises enough questions in his film to provoke additional reading and investigation into the series of events that can only be described as weird and astounding.

The film explores the personalities and emotions behind the cult members, so we can more easily identify with them. Indeed, Jim Parsons as Warren and Simon Rex as David particularly reveal nuanced performances. If the media painted the cult members as crazies, Gallagher counters this with human portrayals. Accordingly, finger-pointing should revert to an acknowledgement of human vulnerability with empathy. Finally, the film’s overarching themes warn that cults’ exist and happen because of nuclear family dysfunction, lack of communication and love and bonding with family. The cynical culture focusing on materialism, commercialization and indecency provokes the establishment of cults.

Farmiga’s Bonnie encourages and revitalizes Nelson’s Applewhite. They find a home in each other, though theirs was a platonic relationship. As leaders they forbid cult members sexual relationships. Some of the scenes created to “fight” sexual desire are humorous. But the response when the “culprits” confessed sexual acts gives one pause.

The ensemble performances in addition to Farmiga and Nelson’s in depth portrayals carefully walk the line between farce and shocking. The film captures a chapter in the history of American doomsday cults that offers more room for study.

https://tribecafilm.com/films/leader-202