What is perhaps the most amazing thing about Going Clear is that, from the original
book’s conception, it was not supposed to be condemnation of Scientology. The book was intended to act as an
investigation and informative discussion of the merits and criticisms of the organization,
but what the author found was uniformly disturbing and horrifying. Enter documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney, who
sought to adapt the book into a documentary, and I’ll be damned if he did not
succeed in making one of the most compelling documentaries in recent memory,
and not just because of its sensational material.
Gibney excels as a documentarian because he is able to craft
a story purely through his research and his interviews, which sounds like a no
brainer as far as documentaries go but can be rather difficult to achieve in
execution. Here, Gibney begins his story
with the life and mind of Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard, whom evidence
and testimony paints in two seemingly disparate lights: as a manipulative cult
leader seeking to create a personal tax shelter or as a disturbed individual
who actually believes what he tells his followers. Gibney rather amazingly embraces that
contradiction and shows that Hubbard could well have been both simultaneously,
a man with selfish intentions who melted under the self-imposed pressures of
the mythology he created.
However, this fascinating biographical study is only the tip of
the iceberg, as the film starts to investigate Hubbard’s successor as leader of
the church, David Miscavige. Miscavige
is infamous for his unwillingness to engage in interviews or discourse with the
media, and Gibney tries to explain this seclusion by looking to how Miscavige
was brought up in the church, how he manipulated his way into a position of
absolute power within the church’s ranks, and how he has abused that power to
corrupt the organization even beyond its founder’s intentions, causing even the
IRS to bend to his will. This film
exposes Miscavige as the head of the largest corporation in the world and how
he has gotten away with passing it off as a tax-exempt religion. It is gripping stuff.
But what this all culminates in is not just a biography of
the organization itself, but of the people it has used and abused to further
its ends. There is some obligatory
service rendered to the lives and manipulations of noted Scientologist
celebrities such as John Travolta and Tom Cruise, whose subjugation into being
spokespeople for the church is sadder than I had ever realized. But it is in the numerous interviews with survivors
of the mental, emotional, and physical abuse administered by the church that
really strike home the monstrosity of this organization and what it can get
away with under the banner of religious freedom. This includes former leaders within the church
who have since become disillusioned, people who have been sent to actual prison
camps for re-education, and those who have been harassed by the church in the
many years since leaving. It is
eye-opening to just how horrible the infamous group is to those in its fold.
The last frame of the film is a list of those who declined
to be interviewed, exclusively consisting of those still affiliated with the
Church of Scientology. The film posits
that to appear in public would necessitate self-defense against the claims that
hundreds of their former ranks have alleged, and that the church is not
equipped to deny any of the mountains of evidence against them. Alex Gibney has compiled such a complete case
against the institution that the two hour runtime is collapsing under the
weight of the evidence, as there are undoubtedly many stories that there simply
wasn’t enough runtime to share. This is
a brilliant instance of documentary filmmaking and deserves your undivided
attention. Give it just that.
No comments:
Post a Comment