Split Image, l'envoûtement

This 1982 film is supported by a great cast and film score by Bill Conti (Rocky, FX.) Filmed largely in Dallas and Texas, this anti-cult film deals with basically the same subject as a Canadian film released the previous year. Ticket To Heaven (1981) also has a great cast and for me is a much more entertaining and realistic film. TTH deals with the true story of a depressed young man getting caught up in the cult of Sun-Yung Moon, while Split Image portrays the identity crisis of a young man who is seeking answers beyond the sometimes shallow lives of his family and friends. His confusion leads him to a new-age cult, where he finds the leader to be even more sinister and devoid of answers than those he runs away from. While many of life's questions can be answered by the Bible, proper spiritual guidance and direction is essential, particularly for those who are not mature enough to seek God on their own.

Gripping story to watch, and Fonda and Woods are both perfect fits for their roles here.

And this movie is uncanny in its parallels to politics here in year 2019.

Today's analogue to Fonda's cult would be contemporary political "progressivism". A veneer of sentiment of love and utopian hopes for mankind masks an underbelly of self-righteous smugness and dangerous naivite about human societies and the destructive consequences of public policy based on wishful thinking.

The populist conservative movement is the analogue to the cult deprogrammers. Offering a crude and harsh sounding message in an attempt to dissuade people from succumbing to the cult's suicidal dogma.

And the icing on the cake is that Woods and Fonda both are activists today that parallel their roles in this movie.

Progressives will no doubt be aghast at this opinion.

This film comes across more as a made for TV movie than an actual piece of Hollywood cinema. The biggest flaw takes place in the first act with the very lazy telling of the Olympic hopeful gymnast's conversion to a cult.

We are expected to believe a pampered spoiled upper middle class athlete training for the Olympics can be brainwashed to join a cult over a 3 day weekend. His home life is happy and comfortable until he hits on a cute cult groupie. It's clear he went to the commune only in the hopes of bedding down the cute chick with issues. After spending the first two days being appropriately appalled at the clear cult activity, somehow on the 3rd day he has drunk the kool-aide.

It's a bit silly to think after 3 days of singing Kumbaya around the campfire and abstaining from masturbation is enough to make even the most disenfranchised youth shave his head and change his name. Yet there was no back story to suggest he was even slightly unhappy with his normal life.

A bit of real mind control factors are briefly explored. The athlete being initially approached by an attractive girl takes a page from the real practice of "flirty fishing" from the Children of God child molester cult known as The Family. They also briefly touch upon sleep deprivation and starvation (proven mind control techniques) but only in the briefest sense.

Everything else that follows is as lazy. The deprogramming is just as over the top and poorly executed as the original conversion. Cults and mind control are a very real thing and this movie does not educate or inform. It's a very cartoonish depiction of a very real thing.

This movie was released in 1982. This was an era when the original flower children of the 1960s grew into young urban professionals. It is truly a representation of the boogeyman that the baby boomers (who had now become parents) thought would come in the night to steal the American dream. This movie is best enjoyed only as a cultural snapshot of what parents feared in the halcyon days of Ronald Regan.

Anyone who is unfavorably commenting about Peter Fonda's performance seems to forget just how much of a trippy hippie he himself was in the 60's. His role here was absolutely brilliant as the manipulative Neil Kirklander. James Woods; well, as usual, simply stellar! My favorite roles for him are exactly personified in this one: sleazy, unrefined, unkempt, easily angered and irritable, and doesn't care what the world thinks. He makes being disgusting look like such fun (when he spits on Kirklander's picture as a sort of de-programming method for Danny). O'Keefe and Dennehy are equally superb and convincing. Karen Allen is as we always expect; vulnerable and adorably sensitive. Fonda takes it all on this one for me, the man who gave John Lennon "I know what it's like to be dead." Excellent!

This is a very good movie and scarily realistic even in 2023! I love that Danny 'Joshua' Stetson starts out as a smarmy cynical young man and his transformation feel quite credible.

A few things about the cult are implied but never made really explicit, e.g. How they use hard labour and malnutrition as tools for control. How they use religion as substitute for sex. I wondered if Kirklander was drugging his disciples because Danny 'Joshua' Stetson mentioned that he doesn't shave anymore and no longer has any sex drive, and Rebecca mentioned that she and the other girls no longer get their period. Was this physical transformation induced by drugs or was it a psycho-somatic phenomenon? Other topics were mentioned in passing but not fully explored, e.g. When Charles Pratt mentions that Homelanders are in fact collecting money for charities that don't exist.

The theme of duality - foreshadowed earlier in the movie by Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - continues here by making us ask the question: Who are the 'good' guys? And who are the 'bad' guys? Is Homeland really such a horrible place compared to the materialistic world outside? Is Kirklander really such a bad guy compared to Charles Pratt?

The de-programming scenes were the best part of the movie! Especially the scene where the cult attacks the safe house and the aftermath of that; the exchange that Charles Pratt has with Danny 'Joshua' Stetson's family is very powerful & revealing stuff!