RETRO ACTIVE: Ticket to Heaven (1981)
by Nick Schager
What's new is always old, and in this recurring column, I'll be taking a look at the classic genre movies that have influenced today's new releases. In honor of Sean Durkin's Cannes and New York Film Festival-heralded cult-life drama, Martha Marcy May Marlene, this week it's Ralph L. Thomas' 1981 drama Ticket to Heaven. Indoctrination, entanglement, and escape prove the three steps of religious cult experience addressed by Ticket to Heaven, Ralph L. Thomas' 1981 Canadian indie about a man recruited into a bonkers spiritual outfit. Adapted from Josh Freed's novel Moonwebs, Thomas' film opens with a credit sequence in which the camera tracks a white van crossing the Golden Gate Bridge and traversing San Francisco's streets, gradually increasing proximity until it enters the vehicle, where a group of young people are chanting and cheering for "Father." That celebration is interrupted when David (Nick Mancuso) is found to have fallen asleep, a no-no given the outfit's mantra "Bring in the money, stay awake, smash out Satan!" The fervor is palpable, though the story quickly diffuses that mood by jumping three months back in time to find disaffected school teacher David attending a Toronto comedy show by friend Larry (Saul Rubinek), whose stand-up routine is performed in a nun outfit (and, later, food costumes). David is reeling from a break-up with Sarah (Dixie Seatle), and despite Larry stating that this development is for the best, he can't dissuade David from traveling to California to visit Karl (Stephen Markle), who promptly takes him to the "Liberty City" commune, a supposedly self-sustaining outfit (via drug rehab and other social service operations) whose members eat stew, frolic in nature, and smile with wacko glee. 
David is initially creeped out by the ultra-emotional sincerity and good cheer of the residents, including boisterous Ruthie (a vibrant Kim Cattrall), be it during a woman's acoustic-guitar performance of "Blowing in the Wind" or daytime exercise routines that amount to holding hands and chanting in open fields. In these and other instances?such as when David is asked to candidly share his feelings around a campfire, or compelled to rapturously sing arm-in-arm with others?Thomas' camera spins and pans in harmony with the cultists, aesthetically expressing their crazed zealotry. From sitting in circles and playing dodgeball to running and playing with kid-like glee, the group's various pastimes carry a distinct childhood vibe, subtly suggesting that its methods of inculcating new members is rooted in tapping into a subconscious sense of youthful peace, innocence and togetherness. Still, especially with regards to a bizarre preacher's sermons about Christ, the environment's sheer weirdness leads David to at first crave alone time (which is thwarted at every turn), ask Karl to help facilitate his departure, and eventually try to flee the church. 
Persistence and repetition, however, prove successful brainwashing techniques on David?who, after his break-up, is desperate for affection and acceptance?and Ticket to Heaven is canniest in its portrait of how cults get their hooks into people not through overt intimidation but tenacious reiteration of mantras and routines. Once David succumbs to the collective, whose leader "Father" is an Asian businessman never seen in person, Thomas' film segues to the far darker side of the coin, depicting David cutting off all communication with his family on the orders of Ingrid (Meg Foster), even as he comes to see (via a cohort lying to people on the street) the dubious logic governing the group's dogma. Alas, Thomas' TV movie-grade direction rarely elevates these sequences, and it somewhat bogs down the later action concerning Larry's enlistment of David's parents and friends to kidnap him from the commune. Even with Mancuso evocatively expressing the docile blankness that overtakes cult members' personalities, and a young Rubinek balancing sarcastic wise-cracking with profound sadness and fear, Ticket to Heaven can't muster much in the way of dramatic urgency during its prolonged snatch-and-grab centerpiece, its camerawork too pedestrian and flat to heighten suspense. 
Such formal shortcomings, however, can't obscure the overriding acuity of Thomas' tale, which eventually details?through the abducted David's treatment sessions with a former cult member?a de-programming process involving aggressive, unyielding refutation of cult doctrine hypocrisies and nonsensicalities. As with its dramatization of David's early attempts to reject the cult in favor of his old life (epitomized by a frowned-upon visit to a diner for a burger), Ticket to Heaven addresses its protagonist's recovery with minimal preachiness and intense attention to his tangled, warring psychological dynamics. That shrewdness extends to the closing shot, in which a rehabilitated David, lovingly embraced by his relatives and acquaintances, gazes across a city street at his former cult family members, his eyes initially triumphant, and yet?in the final freeze frame?also exhibiting a severity that captures the film's uncertainty about cultists' potential, ultimately, for achieving true liberation from the forces that once ensnared them.
Posted by ahillis at October 21, 2011 1:18 PM
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/greencine/daily/~3/MzfX9iPAMUM/008161.html
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