“Heaven’s Gate” (2020)
The Cult of Cults.
If I were to ask you what you know of “The Cult of Cults” otherwise known as “Heaven’s Gate” I’d hazard a guess you’d relate the media curated picture of an, albeit bizarrely tragic cult, and 39 members who followed both their leader Marshall Applewhite (also known as “Do”) as well as a supposed spaceship trailing the Hale-Bopp comet in March 1997 to commit the largest mass suicide on United States soil. I feel sure you’d also relate the fact, and these are indeed recorded facts, that each and every member was found in the exact same uniform akin to the TV series Star Trek (with eerily similar logo and badge applied to said uniform) as well as attired in brand new Nike trainers and after having taken a large sedative before being asphyxiated to death or rather to ascend to the next “Level” of experience and through the gates of Heaven and into a new plane of existence free of this earthly world. The picture previously painted may well have been of a group of disaffected loners and unintelligent drifters attaching themselves to a religious cult out of desperation, but what if I told you, or rather this 2020 4 part documentary series tells you, a rather different story?
All of the above is true, even down to the ascension to heaven via a spaceship dressed in brand new Nike training shoes, but even my albeit macabre interest in the bizarre genre of serial killers/cults and having read a number of books in the dim and distant past hadn’t prepared me for this updated and sympathetic documentary, but not of angry and distressed unintelligent people determined to end their lives but of highly intelligent computer programmers and analysts arguably ahead of their time with firmly affixed smiles free to come and go from a cult many returned to time and time again and importantly, not 39 “classmates” seeking an unhappy suicide and release from this world but of cult bound, happy and fully functioning adults, many of whom had been with the cult since its first days in the early 1970’s.
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Spread across four brilliantly insightful episodes from “The Awakening” to “The Exit”, this documentary paints a fuller picture of the cult members themselves with so many poignant reminders and call backs to their earliest days (with rarely seen pictures and videos spanning two decades and more) and their utter devotion to both their leader and his cause. There is no sadness or dismay. Just eager excitement for an excruciating and horrible ending to their earthly lives before immediate ascension through the gates of Heaven.
There are many ugly truths to be taken away from this real life documentary and two bittersweet truths I noted were the brain washed acceptance and compliance to the adherence of the teachings of a singular Christ like figure and the horrible cult like disconnection from family and friends not in the cult. See Scientology today and frankly any and every cult you wish to name. But the most heart breaking of all can be found within the aftermath, even 23 years on as per the date of this documentary, and the survivors of the cult who still believe in the “teachings” (make of that particular word what you will) of their leader and the fulfilment of a prophesy many see as personal failures for not having joined their (repeated use for emphasis) “Classmates”. Lives appear to have gone on, but one classmate in particular joined his 39 friends separately and within months of their 1997 departure whilst many more talk directly to camera and with a heart breaking honesty that they are still followers of the cult’s teachings with one in particular wracked with guilt for having let himself down for “failing” and not joining his friends on 26th March 1997.
Strangely fascinating with far more truth to be had behind the sensationalist media headlines of today or yesteryear, if this is your “thing”, then I highly recommend it to you.
I'm sure Michael Cimino would rather be remembered for "The Deer Hunter".
Until I saw the year in the title, I thought this might have been something about the notorious financial disaster of a movie from 1980 that practically killed off United Artists.