Heaven's Gate

The documentary is well made. Lots of original material, interviews with ex members. No annoying voice-over or anything like that. Its really masterfully edited in order to be able to tell the story in such an authentic way. Also nice it caputures the time period contect of the story. Its a period of over 20 years so its interesting to see other things going on that might have inspired or influenced the cult. What I find lacking is that it tries to hard to explain what happens to much from the perspective from the cult members. They do have some outside experts on cults and psychology and all that but what happened is only discussed very broadly, about general techniques used by cults to "brainwash" people. What is unique about this cult is that it started quite large but over the course of those 20 years more and more left, only leaving the people that, well to be frank, apparantly were not 100% there.

What I kept thinking when watching all the cult members performing some acts: These people are obviously completely insane. Not only because of the eventual suicide but also with other things, like performing dangerous surgery in the form of castration on their own members. And of course literally looking at Star Trek for inspiration. I thought the moment that they returned a fancy telescope to the store because they thought it was broken, they couldnt see the UFO through it. Very telling... I had the idea if I was watching a documentary of the local psych ward instead of a cult at times. Usually there is at least some form of coercion by the cult leadership through hierarchy or some other method. People are prevented to leave by threats or something. Nothing like that here, they even all went to Seaworld just before it ended.

Especially because the group was never violent in any way, or tried to hide what they thought, you really got to wonder why these people were never helped. Everybody seems to have been thinking: Oh well, if thats what they want? Or that is was sort of funny to watch these idiots make a spectacle out of themselves. Anyway, the second half of the final episode is quite interesting as it shows all the reactions the event got. But for the most part during the 4 hours I was thinking: Im not watching a documentary about a cult, Im watching home videos of people suffering from mental illness in desperate need of help.

I really wanted to like this. I really did. Unfortunately, it was a boring and tedious 4 hours of attempting to make associations between Christianity, science fiction and cultism to explain this mass suicide. This series would have been greatly improved by delving into the mental illness aspect of the two leaders as well as the members. The series gave this group of lost souls a flowery lens, instead of really looking into the grifting, child abandonment and other reprhensible behavior this group of folks participated in. This would have been an amazing opportunity to shed light on the the types of personalities that are at risk to be swallowed up by psycopathic charismatic leaders. This series almost felt like it was making an excuse for the outcome, when it could have really used the platform to shed light on the ugly truth of the matter mental illness and at-risk populations.

One of many "mini-series" that makes one ask: "uh, why is this padded, stretched, and larded with repetition to get to four episodes?!" I found this added little to what I learned about this group from reading major newspapers at the time. It relied too much on interviews with people who say banal or predictable things; far too much time is taken by uninteresting, shaky home video shot by the group in the 90s. If you know little about this group going in, the story may have a macabre fascination, but otherwise this documentary will likely register as a missed opportunity to better explain, with more wit and insight, the original motives for and influences on the group, apart from the psychology of the ex-music teacher at its center. Why did this cult emerge in the early 70s ( a low point for Hollywood and TV sci-fi) and extinguish itself in the mid 90s? The sentimental, indicative music and clunky editing adds to its tedium and the sense the film-makers are masking a lack of analysis. This film would have been better if the more historical approach of the first episode were extended, smartly edited, and left at 120 minutes (ep. one is by far the best of the four--as it reflects, yet still doesn't detail, that the group was analyzed and widely reported on in the mid 1970s, including a cover feature in Psychology Today: what did that author argue? Despite having the author on camera, this film doesn't specify).

Frank and Sawyer are both captivating as the two most covered interviewees throughout this mini series. The growth of Applewhite's cult from humble beginnings to a mass suicide that took the lives of 39 people is expertly covered here. Animation department did some great work with some of these sequences. It's heartbreaking. There are no easy answers, sadly. But at the end of this you'll see the late members of Heaven's Gate not as deluded freaks but as what they really are. Human.

I was basically unfamiliar with the factual story behind this, and the apparently disrespectful approach taken by the media at the time. This documentary series had an amazing tone--one of respect. The series did not start by passing judgment through assuming an easy conclusion about the events. Instead, the series set out the "backstory" of Do and Ti and what they were looking for, and how they planned to accomplish their dream. The viewer was left to make an independent conclusion as to whether the basis for this was religion, science fiction, fantasy, mental illness or malice. I detected no tone (or desire) in the film makers to laugh, sneer or feel superior.

Speaking only for myself by the end of the series, I found myself saddened by the non-arrival of what the group (won't call them a cult) had been waiting for. An absolutely remarkable series.