Worth: $12.50
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Cast:
Sharon Ready, Virginia Courage, John Ready
Intro:
... a bit one-note or self-confirming.
As a philosopher once said, a wise ruler binds the people with the chains of their own ideas. This pretty much sums up how this small rural New Zealand religious community cum cult manages to reproduce itself. Those outside its more or less closed world might find it hard to imagine why anyone would put up with it, especially the women.
This is not a new topic, there have been other documentary treatments of this community. Perhaps the filmmakers feel that there is intrinsic interest still, partly because of the ever-intriguing disjuncture between the insider accounts and the form of life looked at more dispassionately.
Gloriavale is set in a rural part of New Zealand. As we open to shots of a misty field and cows grazing, a voiceover (from a previous inhabitant) tells us of the life in the place. Basically, the community sets about getting people to breed up (some women had up to 13 children) and obey the rules. They pursue the exploitation of women and the extraction of their labour (living in dorms and working on chores all day) with an alacrity that The Handmaid’s Tale would envy. As the film rolls on, we get more and more stories of the enforced drudgery and the set-in-stone assumptions.
Of course, the documentary has to settle for an ex-member’s view. People who ‘choose’ to stay, don’t really get to defend their choices or speak on camera much here; it all becomes a bit one-note or self-confirming. The only shape to it, is the trial that finally comes about of the founding father/preacher who was charged with serial sexual abuse. Whether the 600 community members/cult followers (comprising just 70 families) actually think of this as closure is left unexplored.
Of course, labelling it a cult – whilst it might help to place a frame around their weird choices – limits the discussion. Cults are, after all, a soft target. However, once we have heard stories and pondered the strength and redemption of the escapees, there isn’t much more to hold us. It might indeed be a happy place for some male members, but the reaction of most people will probably be gratitude that they were not born into such circumstances.
