For documentaries, I'm not there yet. It's a fundamentally different approach to filmmaking than writing a script and using actors. I say all this as my lead up to saying that I liked Holy Hell although I'm not sure why. It could just the topic. It's easy for me to appreciate a documentary even if it's poorly put together as long as the topic is interesting. You really can't beat the access that Will Allen had for this doc. He was the cult's videographer for 22 years. He's going to have some good footage (although apparently, he left most of it behind when he left the cult). It's interesting how this tracks the growth and development of the cult over time. Since this story is being told by a lot of people who were members for a very long time, there's a warmth to the memories. They all have good and bad thoughts about that time. The intimacy of the story is its greatest strength.
By covering such a long amount of time, the potency of individual stretches can be a little diluted. I kept wanting this to be a "Hollywood story" where there was some big end to it: a government raid, the leader - Michel - is sentenced to jail for racketeering, or something like that. There's not. The cult is still going and not much has changed other than an exodus or two. It's anti-climactic in a way that felt real. I've come to appreciate that more since I finished watching it.
The one big failure of the documentary is that it never really convinces me of the appeal. You'd think with this many former acolytes being interviewed, it would go into that a little deeper. What makes Michel so convincing? What is the mindspace of someone under his spell. Maybe everyone was too embarrassed to really dig into that. Perhaps once the spell is broken, it can't be synthesized later in a recollection. It's hard to say the reason for it, but that's where it fell short.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
No comments:
Post a Comment