Writer-director Michael Gallagher, another filmmaker who got his start on YouTube with millions of followers for shows like TotallySketch, has always been a bit obsessed with the infamous Heaven’s Gate 1997 mass suicide in Rancho Santa Fe, CA, right outside where he grew up in San Diego. His interest in this horrific event and the cult that led to it was increased by his own paternal grandparents dropping out and forming a spiritual commune, and later by a cousin joining a cult from which she had to be saved. The whole idea of these kinds of cults, run by charismatic leaders who lure willing souls into their compound, and even to death, in a search for spiritual guidance and redemption is right at the heart of Gallagher’s new film The Leader, which just world premiered at the Tribeca Festival.
This is the story of a UFO cult known as Heaven’s Gate formed in the 1970s but which eventually led in 1997 to the biggest mass suicide on U.S. soil. This was a cult led by Bonnie Lu Nettles (Vera Farmiga) and Marshall “Herff” Applewhite (Tim Blake Nelson), who beginning in the ’70s attracted dozens of people looking for a spiritual reawakening they are told will come when an alien spaceship will land and take them to nirvana — a life far more rewarding than the one they are leading now.
In this widely documented true story, Nettles was a nurse searching for meaning beyond the conventional religions who comes to believe she has been chosen to lead others to a higher calling “beyond the stars.” She hooks up with Applewhite, a quirky man with untreated mental illness and severe doubts about himself, as both come together out of spiritual need and what turns out to be a kind of emotional bonding. What develops is their “organization” blending cosmic destiny and extreme Christianity into something followers in need of belonging to something, anything, will join.
As the years go on it evolves into what is best described as a cult, the kind Jim Jones was able to form outside of America. But Heaven’s Gate became a bit of a house built on sand, dependent on its founders to tell truths and deliver their flock to the promised planet beyond. Into it comes true believer Warren (Jim Parsons), a rigid man battling his own demons and temptations who thinks the extreme structure and discipline required will save him from himself. He is the most earnest of all the followers, more than Michelle (a fine Grace Caroline Currey) and new recruit David (Simon Rex), who seem willing to comply until their attraction to each other and violations of the flesh are found out and they must answer for their sins. It is that kind of place, but as Bonnie Lu becomes ill (she died in 1985) and Herff is left to his own bizarre behavior and unbalanced leadership, things start to go awry.
This all resulted eventually in the 1997 mass suicide, not like Jones’ cult in Guyana where everyone drank poisoned Kool-Aid all at once, but in a more planned individual transition into the promise of life in the great beyond. A total of 39 bodies including Applewhite’s were eventually discovered in a rented mansion.
Gallagher lays this all out methodically and with the feeling of complete authenticity, almost like a docudrama. It is the result of his extensive research, combing through hours of tapes of Applewhite and others in order to make this true to the well-publicized actual events. He is helped enormously by a brilliant turn from Nelson, who simply seems to inhabit this deeply disturbed man also known as Do; and by a determined but not crazy Nettles aka Ti, played with sheer force and belief by the always compelling Farmiga, a role she seems born to play. Parsons is exceptional as well here as is Rex, who undergoes a cringe-inducing punishment for his transgressions.
The Leader, which is looking for U.S. distribution, may not be a pleasant experience, but it is well-timed and pertinent in a country, and world, seemingly filled now with misguided people looking for some kind of connection, not only to each other in a divided society but to themselves. Gallagher’s film shows how easy it is to believe the big lie, and the sad result for those who succumb to it.
Producers are Jana Gallagher, Michael Wormser, Joel David Moore, Matt Murphie and Michael Gallagher.
Title: The Leader
Festival: Tribeca (Spotlight Narrative)
Director-screenwriter: Michael Gallagher
Cast: Tim Blake Nelson, Vera Farmiga, Jim Parsons, Grace Caroline Currey, Simon Rex
Sales agent: The Exchange/Voltage
Running time: 1 hr 44 mins
