Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: THE LEADER [Tribeca Film Festival - New York, New York]

Making a film about the Heaven’s Gate cult suicide was always going to be a divisive subject. The trick is how to look at the perspective of how it was built and move from there. Writer/Director Michael Gallagher, who grew up near where it happened in California, has obviously a specific connection to the material. He tries to humanize Do and Ti as they came to be known in his film "The Leader" [Spotlight Narrative] . Tim Blake Nelson goes weirdly a little extreme as Do but it is hard to get a sense of what the man actually believed or what demon he was actually fighting. Vera Farmiga as Ti, a former nurse who leaves her family to find a connection seems far fetched. However, the great thing about Farmiga is that she doesn’t judge her characters. She plays them straight ahead until they reach their breaking point.

Simon Rex plays his possibility as one half of a couple that breaks the rules of cult. He is a little over the top while the female companion Michelle (played by Grace Caroline Currey) really shows the dynamic in play. Jim Parsons though as Warren, a man stuck between all things, really gives a sense of what is being lost and found. He believes and belief is a big part of what the film is showing and trying to parlay. Even if the focus is wrong, the point is the furor of the passion for whatever it is. As Parsons said in the Q&A, it didn’t work so well for them but their heart was in the right place. The irony to that is Do and Ti were disingenuous with that from the start. They wanted validation and more the means to an end. Ann Lee is her "Testament" movie was singular and similar even though her connection was more worldly and yet she was persecuted equally. B

By Tim Wassberg