ok_english_bt
Didn't find Holy Hell very convincing, sorry to say. Made the mistake of watching it back-to-back with Netflix's rivetting Wild Wild Country, admittedly the whole time frame of a series means you get a much wider examination. So, while the latter looked in detail at historical events surrounding the Rajneesh Puram community set up in Wasco Country, Oregon, in the 80s which was part of a wider global movement, the focus in Will Allen's film is on just one community and the personality cult of its leader. That said, you would have thought there were lots of opportunities for a more detailed analysis of events on the 'small-scale' Buddhafield, a cult of 'servants' and 'master' supposedly based on the teachings of Buddhism. We get a little bit of that early on, but by the end of the film all I'm really left with is "Fraudulent religious teacher misleads vulnerable searching followers, principally to feed his rapacious ego and seduce sexually naive young men". And you can argue with my summing up, but as a viewer I thought the film lacked tension and drama, at least the sort purported in the title. Although it attempts to document the period from when Allen joined in 1985 to when he left in 2007, presenting events asa sort of video diary, I don't 'get' what the teacher (who uses various aliases, but principally known as 'Michel' at the time) did to manipulate and control his followers, surely the point of an expose type documentary?Michel himself comes across as just plain strange, and if there was anything sinister about him I don't think the film really captured that. He is supposed to have used hypnotism on his followers, but the film doesn't really convey that. Instead we get endless pictures of him walking around in his speedos often bare-chested, frankly looking rather ridiculous. Is the plastic surgery and make-up, the sort of camping up of things, meant to make him seem dangerous? For me, it had the opposite effect.The anger that former followers of the Buddhafield cult feel is surely meant to express alienation and detail suffering, but I think it just doesn't come across with any clarity or intensity in the film. This may be because we only get snapshots of what actually went on in the community (I don't know what they did all day, for example, were they just working the land, or religious learning, apart from their daily 'therapy' sessions?). We don't see them interacting with each other, or with their 'master' very much, the events seem very static. As if to represent this, Michel's most consistent affectation seems to be his almost constant statuesque pose, aside from the initial creepiness, frankly rather ridiculous and funny ...I'm not trying to belittle the film, although I'd have to say that next to it, Wild Wild Country is a colossus, I just don't think Holy Hell does the job of warning people about cults adequately, surely what it must have set out to do. Mission failed, I'm afraid. By the end, the film seemed rather dated, perhaps the time to present events had really passed and they would have been better as a featured on a weekly news programme, a sort of extended reportage rather than a feature-length film.Would anybody in this day and age fall for somebody like Michel, when presented alongside the likes of 'big' cult leaders like Baghwan Shree Rajneesh, Jim Jones, L. Ron Hubbard etc. Those sorts were quite mad and dangerous, while this little minnow seems pathetic and relatively harmless. Even when confronted by the film maker towards the end of the film, a chance you'd have thought would have ratcheted up the tension and drama, Michel remains impassive about all his sexual adventures, shows almost no reaction to the accusations, never mind remorse ... so, sorry, but the film fizzles out for me.The obvious cult to go after these days is ISIS (or Daesh), isn't it, but that would be pretty risky, not likely to happen for years ...
hddu10
Since this was picked-up and broadcast on CNN, I figured it would have something earth-shattering or at the very least "new" to say...but nope. This is essentially the same cult story we've seen and heard over the last 30-odd years retold; eccentric, dynamic, charismatic yet narcissistic leader gains a following of feeble-minded "searching" (see: self-absorbed) adults who then feel betrayed after they find out he is a fraud. Yes, the specific details of this particular case get very lurid (instead of the female followers being targeted, this time it is the males) and we do get a glimpse at the subject from an insider's point of view. While the documentary tries its utmost to show all the participants/cult-followers as "just regular people" as if to say, "this could have happened to you!" the reality is no one in their right mind would or could be naive enough to think following such a ridiculous individual would NOT lead to sexual impropriety. Notice, I specifically omit the word "abuse" since looking at these individuals, it becomes very clear that any unwilling heterosexual, able-bodied man would at the very least use his facial muscles to mouth the words "no thanks" when faced with eminent anal rape. This looks more like a bad-date/bad-sex after the fact regrets from possibly being emotionally coerced/tricked into it. But to put this into perspective, no one was killed, no one died from malnutrition/poisoning/fatigue, no one even made it into the internet news until this came out...so as far as cults go this one is pretty boring. All this film seems to do is come off as some reminiscing homage to the lost youth of the cult's followers who are now just trying to move on to the next phase of their lives. Take away the cult part and this is just another day in the life of anyone else on the planet. NOTE: I am NOT a cult member, nor have I ever even heard of this guy or this cult before watching the movie...I'm just saying this really isn't that great or saying anything new about cults. Frankly, it just seems more self-indulgent than insightful.
