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Liberation is a history of personalities. How are they formed and where can they lead? How they collide or merge with others, how they change over time. This is also a personal story. It is co-written and directed native boy (Golda, Tatami) the true story of her grandmother, a Holocaust survivor who left her family in the 1980s to join the all-female Harmony Commune cult.
Carrie Coon joins the cult
Rita (Carrie Coon) is a middle manager working a demanding but boring bank job. At home are her daughters – cheerful, independent Ella (Bella Ramsey) and relaxed, impressionable Joe (Odessa Young) – Rita’s warm but cocky husband Ruben (played by Coon’s real-life husband, Tracy Letts), plus his elderly, sick father.
But Nativ does not start his story here. We begin with Ella and Joe driving down the road to visit their mother. The film bounces back and forth between two timelines: Rita’s acquaintance with cult leader Ricky (Lily James) for whom she will leave her family and the girls’ trip to Ricky’s commune, where Rita has lived for two years.
This structure explains the “join or not?” The question from the beginning, which leads to more interesting: why Why would anyone leave their loving family for a life so far away?
The film explores two main “whys”. The first is the film’s backer: the cult leader himself, JamesRicky King. The second is Rita herself, and how her traumatic childhood and middle age lead her to capitalize on King’s no-nonsense charisma.
A cliché leader
Any filmmaker creating a cult leader faces several choices—some decisions are made in the script, others in the performance. How do you expose their charlatanism without straining the credibility of the follower’s choice to join? And if at all, how do you distinguish this leader from other on-screen portrayals—especially the Manson archetype in the public imagination?
nativeCo-author Noah Berman-Herzberg and James Get it half right. in the face (literally) JamesOnly beauty half justifies her casting. A female leader who exclusively recruits women, she embodies the “harmony, friendship and truth” she claims she can share with her followers – a pretty face that embodies this is half the battle. But JamesThe play adheres to a jaded hippy-dip, fairies-away, Manson-girl approach.
James limited to the existence of the real Rick, although how much Nativ knew or shared with the actor about the real-life King is unclear. Either way, the result is a character that leans heavily on cliche. The film is less interested in exploring what made Ricky so appealing (besides his looks, did he use femininity to expand his following? What made him different from other charismatic leaders?), instead relying on the iconic 1970s angle.
grains of truth
Rick’s appeal comes from the kernels of truth within his beliefs—the kernels that all viable cults need to function. “Half a truth,” said Benjamin Franklin, “is often a big lie.” So Ricky tells Rita that her smoking is bad for her. This junk food is bad for him. Maybe not all of his medication is needed. And did he know that magic mushrooms feel good? Cults like Harmonia identify real problems only to offer simple analyzes and remedies to people’s complex problems. Her beauty and truth caught in the lie are most of Rick’s attractive lie.
Good thing Rita is holding up her end of the bargain as a victim. Kuni Rita is a more persuasive follower than James The king is the leader. In fact, Rita may be fit for the job. Tragic childhood, hard but boring job, middle age plateau, low self-esteem. He sets himself up so clearly as an obvious potential victim that Ricky barely needs to glance to see him and sink into his claws.
The trauma came alive
The film traces Rita’s story early on, cleverly grasping our sympathy from the jump. Finally, when she receives an invitation from the local Holocaust Memorial Center to talk about her childhood – when her mother and sisters were killed by the Nazis in a Jewish family in Europe – Rita has a panic attack and makes a quick exit.
In a shifting structure, the film juxtaposes these insights into Rita’s past with her future. We see the physical transformation of Rita (dubbed “Gaia” by King). Her short hair, simple handmade dresses, and haggard face and frame invite comparisons to her past. Is he trying to somehow relive a return to the past? Take her sisters place and change the past by re-enacting it? Did he fall for a false self-liberation to mistakenly atone for the liberation that came too late for his mother and sisters?
of Ramsey Ella, seeing through King’s antics, may not be able to see it, but she sees the mother she misses, the hooded mother, the mother retreating under the warm blanket of ignorance. Ella is an avatar for the audience, channeling the audience’s frustration at Rita’s seduction, expressing it with charming teenage stropism. Ramsey appeared the last of us.
Kuni “Gaia” is Rick’s mother’s half-soothing, half-needy daughter. She wants to please her surrogate mother (female lead as mother?), asking permission for every little thing, so when she is forced to hand the mother reins back to her daughters, she becomes scared, confused and desperate. A tragic past has been used to make the present look tragic, leading to a tragic future.
conclusion
Liberation Wants to explore how people’s pasts and the personalities they develop can make them vulnerable to exploitation. Only half make it. Exploited party expertise, through Kuni Rita is moving and realistic. But the exploitative side does not stand JamesKing, who is an unexplored, frustrating cliché of a ’70s-style cult leader.
The Liberation will be released in the US on January 8, 2027.
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