With three documentaries from Academy Award-winning director Alex Gibney showing at the 2015 Sydney Film Festival, I packed plenty of popcorn and set out on a three-day bender that transported me from the mythic tale of galactic overlord Xenu in Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief to the soul of James Brown in Mr Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown, and then on to another cult, Apple, with Steve Jobs: Man in the Machine.
From the director of We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks and The Armstrong Lie comes the most anticipated documentary of 2015 about the jaw-dropping history and practices of Scientology.
The film traces L Ron Hubbard’s rise from a pulp fiction science fiction writer to the international best-selling author of Dianetics, before eventually fashioning himself as a godlike figure at the helm of his own “church”. This trajectory is paralleled by explosive interviews with former Scientologists, documenting their initial seduction by the church before finally escaping from its clutches.
Academy Award-winning director Alex Gibney came to the festival with a trifecta
The power of Gibney’s documentary lies with his interview subjects. We hear accusations from Scientology’s second-in-command Mark Rathbun, the acclaimed director Paul Haggis and Sylvia ‘Spanky’ Taylor, the former liaison to John Travolta.
These testimonies are excellent but it’s not the first time these spurned members have spoken out. The act of uniting all these voices of dissent in one chorus lends weight to their cause, but also makes us question how Hubbard’s fictional tale managed to seduce such smart, determined individuals.
The documentary unpacks the nitty-gritty details of Scientology’s “Sea Org”, an assemblage of the singularly most dedicated members of the church. The organisation worked for a pittance onboard Hubbard’s ship while he fled the IRS. If you think getting a tattoo of your partner’s name is an extreme act of commitment, imagine signing a billion-year contract of allegiance to Scientology, an opportunity that most Sea Org members leapt at.
Gibney also devotes considerable airtime to examining the celebrity appeal of Scientology. John Travolta’s status as the poster boy for the church is considered, although we sadly don’t get a glimpse of Travolta’s atrocity Battleship Earth, a 2000 film inspired by Hubbard’s writing.
Tom Cruise does not escape unscathed either. The accusations that high-ranking Scientology officials helped end his marriage to Nicole Kidman, brainwashed their children and groomed church member Nazanin Boniadi into becoming his new girlfriend are gobsmacking.
While watching church head David Miscavige smile from ear to ear at an official address, it is clear to see where Cruise gets his manic self-assurance from. At one point, Miscavige laughs off the description of him being a Scientology robot, all the while laughing in a robotic manner that seems to defy human behavior.
Unfortunately, the visuals do not always reach the great heights of the verbal testimonies included. There are one too many sweeping helicopter shots of the Scientology building and the reenactments and graphics feel hokey at times.
But for a film primarily about a war of words, the interviews and wide scope of Gibney’s vision is compelling enough, and definitely worth a trip to the cinemas when Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief is released.
4 stars
