My Scientology Movie (2015)

As this documentary delves into the cult of Scientology with an unclear objective it stumbles into possibly very interesting facets of its organisation without being able to fulfill any narrative purpose. Through good producers some key ex-members are involved and it seems the authors wished to document through the filming of a reenactment the shady practices, the extremely coercive atmosphere and the tyrannical power structure hidden to the public and known only to insiders of the cult.

And then it goes nowhere.

The documentary devolves into a mess of confrontations with the cult, backstage of the reenactment and interviews with ex-cultists. All these elements end up in a disjointed and clunky effort without any of the three main narratives styles (first-person, interview, reenactment) being brought to a satisfactory conclusion or forming a finite part in a complex scope. Each part losing much of the potential utility to create a complete documentation.

From what the final product looks I have to conclude that Mr. Louis Theroux and Mr. John Dower have done an incompetent job and furthermore the former likes a bit too much to be in front of the camera.

Let me add that although the conditions might have been considered somewhat challenging they seem to have completely lost the sense of "what and why and for whom" while being completely owned by Mr. Marty Rathbun (a key witness) losing perspective while fuelling Rathbun's own personal vendetta with BBC money. Even that might have been interesting to watch and a possible narrative path, instead all Mr. Theroux accomplishes is to annoy and alienate even Rathbun with his useless questions without bringing home nothing for the viewer. In substance the aforementioned pair have simply not enough documentary or journalistic instinct to turn the source to their advantage and get under his skin nor to paint a broader picture by using the source skilfully. They are not able to put up a participated observation (a very well known anthropological technique) nor a selfless journalistic report, ending up in the middle of nowhere.

All Mr. Theroux seems to be good at is to put up A-DUMB-BRIT-STONY-FACE that he thinks passes for grand journalism.

I empathise deeply with Paul Carlin, the film editor, for his pains in putting together something watchable as it is must have been many and prolonged. The whole thing deserves a 6 because of him and the amount of potential gold the producers were able to dig in the first place.

PS Can you imagine this, same premises, but done by Herzog? PPS "He knows were the bodies are..."