Distress, madness, sadness, loneliness, weakness, sometimes pure chance … What are the reasons that push men and women to integrate sects? The price to be paid is often heavy: making a cross on your past life by isolating itself from your loved ones; Empty your bank account to fill the pockets with a guru to whom one gives ourselves body and soul; Losing all your benchmarks that are both physical and mental. This mechanics of the grip, the Spanish directors Javier Ambrosi and Javier Calvo dissect it in the series Mesiasavailable on Arte platform.
In the Catalan mountains, a brother and a sister aged in his forties are each caught up in their past when they come across the viral clip of Stella Maris, a musical group of young Catholic girls. In their childhood, they lived to the rhythm of the excesses of their mother, Montserrat – named after a massif near Barcelona known for her black virgin. Her daily life revolves around alcohol and drugs to forget the present moment, and prostitution to survive, before she sinks into religious fanaticism. The extravagance of the young woman then gives way to sectarian delirium. The episodes follow one another by alternating the flashbacks over several decades, punctuated by a very successful pop and rock soundtrack. The atmosphere contrasts intelligently with the feeling of abandonment experienced by children, whose lives will be broken.
Attraction for the plot
In recent years, several streaming platforms have tried to tell the story of emblematic sectarian movements founded in the last century. Sometimes with a lot of success, like Raël: The Prophet of extraterrestrialsmini-series of four episodes available on Netflix, retracing the course of Claude Vorilhon. This French guru convinced tens of thousands of followers that he had been removed by extraterrestrials. “These works arouse both fascination and fear in the collective imagination because we have a passion, almost literary, for strange things, which come out of the ordinary”, analyzes Martin Geoffroy, researcher in sociology at Cégep Edouard -Montpetit in Montreal.
This specialist, who has been studying sectarian drifts for over thirty years, also sees it as a certain attraction for the conspiracy. “Although we are obviously not all conspiracies, this spring attracts: someone always orchestrates a malicious plan. It is almost an anthropological factor.” In Wild Wild Countrystill on Netflix, the Maclain Way and Chapman Way documentaries return to the itinerary of an Indian guru managed to build from scratch, with his disciples, a city in Oregon, in the United States. The border between criticism and complacency is sometimes fine. “Some series are factually correct, others exaggerate for a sensationalist purpose. The tone used can be too benevolent, in particular to facilitate access to gurus, which more readily accept to be filmed if they perceive a certain favorable treatment” , underlines Martin Geoffroy. At the risk, to create, unwittingly, again supporters.