Apostasy, 2017.
Directed by Daniel Kokotajlo.
Starring Siobhan Finneran, Sacha Parkinson, Molly Wright and Robert Emms.
SYNOPSIS:
Inside the Jehovah’s Witness community, a family is in turmoil. The elder daughter has rejected the faith and has been cut off from everything and everybody she knows. Her mother is only allowed limited visits, her younger sister isn’t allowed to speak to her and it’s a crisis of faith for both of them.
If the title of Daniel Kokotajlo’s first feature film sounds familiar, it might be because you saw Scorsese’s Silence (2016), where Japanese Christians were forced to apostasise – publicly renounce their faith – in order to save their lives. One of the young women at the centre of Apostasy does the same thing, not to save her life but because she no longer believes the teachings of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and because she has broken its rules by being unmarried and pregnant. As a consequence, she’s disfellowshipped.
A long, clumsy word full of significance and dread for anybody who, in the eyes of the elders, crosses the line. For Luisa (Sacha Parkinson) it means being cut off completely from her family, her friends, everything she’s ever known. She has to leave home, she’s not allowed to speak to anybody from the community and even her own mother, Ivanna (Siobhan Finneran) can only visit occasionally and offer severely limited support. Despite her outward dedication to her faith, she’s ripped apart inside and the effect on her younger daughter, Alex (Molly Wright), is much the same.
This is an insider’s view of a closed community, one that goes much deeper than the single issue everybody associates with the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Blood transfusion. That gets another airing in next month’s The Children Act, based on the novel by Ian MacEwan, and the two films make interesting companion pieces yet it’s the smaller, lower budget and deeply personal Apostasy that’s the more powerful of the two. Kokotajlo was brought up in the JW community in Oldham and, apparently, used the exterior of the city’s meeting hall in the film. His portrait of the people and their beliefs is shot through with an authenticity and intimacy that can only come from somebody who’s experienced it at first hand, yet it’s written with an unexpected detachment, almost coolness at times.
But there’s no doubting the intensity of Alex’s beliefs, or those of her mother, Ivanna. There’s no doubting their sincerity either, but there’s something oppressive, all-pervasive about the JW way of life. In a moment of crisis and in need of a moment’s thinking time, Ivanna retreats to the ladies’ in the meeting hall – only to find that the elder’s words are piped throughout the building. Nobody is allowed to miss a word. It’s one of many sequences in the film when Siobhan Finneran is outstanding, holding fast onto her beliefs on the outside, but the constant strain on her face and almost total inability to smile betraying her inner conflict. She clings desperately to her religion but possibility that it’s little more than a crutch is never far away.
There’s a sense of mystery surrounding her and the family. The girls’ father is never, ever mentioned yet he still manages to cast a long shadow. Why he left – was it because of the mother’s fervent religious convictions or did those come later? – we never know. In fact, we don’t even know if he’s actually alive but this just reinforces how closed the community is and how much we, the audience, are shut out. And it’s Kokotajlo’s way of making us feel Luisa’s isolation when she is cut off.
Apostasy isn’t always an easy watch – one particularly emotional part of the narrative is almost unbearable – and the inner turmoil, the intensity that borders on indoctrination, are uncomfortable. Yet its restraint means that you’re left to make your own decision about what you see. Never anything less than gripping, it’s intelligent, fascinating and beautifully acted. And, ultimately, deeply sad.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Freda Cooper. Follow me on Twitter.
