My Scientology Movie, 2016.
Directed by John Dower.
SYNOPSIS:
Louis documents his investigation into what goes on behind the scenes of the infamous church of scientology.
There’s been a white van outside my house for a week now. Two men, both smartly dressed sporadically appear, they knock at my door, post photos of me picking up groceries, they know where I was yesterday, a week ago, maybe tomorrow. A woman has a camera with her, she follows close, I can feel her breath against my neck. They’re Scientologists.
Lord knows how boy-ish national treasure Louis Theroux got past the point of development on My Scientology Movie, Theroux’s (surprising) cinematic debut; a screwball, irreverent study of the “most dangerous cult in modern history.” Clearly, Scientology tried their hardest, stalking Theroux like an aging predator, quite literally handing him every opportunity to portray them as nothing more than self-obsessed maniacs.
And Theroux takes the baton and runs with it. Parking up on a public road-and it’s definitely a public road as we’re told many a time-bordering Scientology’s main headquarters-come-movie studio, he finds himself under attack from Scientologists with poor knowledge of the highway code. They shoot him, he shoots them. It plays out like a playground spat, with Theroux calmly asking what their names are as they increasingly become more aggravated.
But Theroux frames the film with the irreverence of a screwball comedy. Clearly unable to interview those part of the organisation, key figures: David Miscavige and Tom Cruise are instead recast. Historic speeches, moments revealed by one time senior church official Mark Rathbun and incidental meetings are all re-enacted in a style similar to that of Joshua Oppenheimer’s Act of Killing.
Not to directly compare My Scientology Movie to Act of Killing. Theroux uses this (deliberately alienating) device as a source of comedy (watching Theroux get thrown against a wall by a fictional David Miscavige is bizarre and brilliant) yet, as the film develops a rhythm, Mark Rathbun begins to take the reign. He reveals “the Hole,” a small office where those that seemed-and emphasis on seemed-to disobey the hierarchy would be locked in and forced to fend for themselves for weeks at a time.
Rathbun directs the fictional Miscavige in a sequence that genuinely shocks. Miscavige is revealed as violent and manipulative, smashing glasses, forcing people to crawl across the floor, to attack one another. Of the reenacted moments, it’s the most successful.
Where Alex Gibney’s Going Clear worked as a hard-hitting expose of Scientology, Theroux takes a far broader comic route. He certainly places emphasis on the bemusing hierarchy and hysterically fictitious beliefs they follow, but the film lacks the personal touch his shows thrive on.
But Theroux is well aware his film isn’t Going Clear and it’s not supposed to be. It doesn’t want to be the hard-hitting expose of something far more revealing, it wants to undermine Scientology, play it off as something merely outlandish. And it succeeds in doing so. Yet there’s a feeling that Theroux slightly pulls his punches. But when a film is as purely entertaining and droll a study, why complain?
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Thomas Harris
Originally published October 6, 2016. Updated April 16, 2018.
