Not because it shows the way in which dogma has the power to rewire the moral instincts of its devotees, but for the sombreness with which it acknowledges that the devotees allow this to happen.Walter did acknowledge that Margaret (Amy Adams), too, was a painter, but the paintings credited to her had slightly smaller almond-shaped eyes with a different style. Kokotajlo presents this world from the perspective of somebody who has experienced and understands it. Despite her efforts to reintegrate herself into the church, the patriarchal powers that be declare: “She likes to voice her opinion too much.”
#Jehovah witness movie series
As Luisa, Parkinson, who caught the eye as Stacey Stringfellow in E4’s wonderful but short-lived series My Mad Fat Diary in 2013, is furious, exhausted, eager to please but unable to compromise. Yet her character motivation remains crystal clear. There is a blankness to her, a stony gaze that betrays only the faintest flicker of doubt as her daughter pleads with her through angry tears. Finneran, on the other hand, dares to portray Ivanna as an unsympathetic character. Wright creates the sense of Alex’s deep spiritual connection with Jehovah but plays her as shy and self-conscious, a wide-eyed little girl lost. The three lead performances are exceptionally controlled. ‘Wrestling with the rules and restrictions of their religion’: Siobhan Finneran and Molly Wright as Ivanna and Alex in Apostasy. The absence of catharsis makes the film’s cold conclusion all the more devastating. Another director might build to this moment as a climax, but Kokotajlo chooses to spend time amid the wreckage. With an expectation established that the narrative will concentrate on the girls, a dramatic event in the film’s third act instead shifts the emphasis to Ivanna. A drab, brownish colour palette mimics the austerity encouraged by the elders, the day-to-day drained of worldly pleasures. Much like his dramatic sensibility, Kokotajlo’s aesthetic is subtle and even-handed. “We could do all right, you know,” exhales Steven with a chilling, happy sigh.Ĭinematographer Adam Scarth favours tight close-ups and two-shots that tend to focus on one character at a time.
Like the wrong ends of two magnets, an invisible forcefield seems to stop them connecting when they kiss, it’s a hard, tight-lipped affair. Kokotajlo emphasises the awkwardness of their courtship, continually positioning them a little too far away from one another. “I don’t know if you’d like me if you really got to know me,” she replies, mostly to herself.
Pursuing her with Ivanna’s approval, the sensible, straight-backed Steven tells Alex that he’d like to get to know her. Though she suffers from a kind of anaemia (severe enough to warrant a transfusion as a baby, despite vehement protest from the elders), she tells her doctor that, as an adult with custody over her own body, she will refuse the transfer of blood.Īlready ashamed of her supposed impurity (“to mess with the body is the worst sin”), Alex feels at a disadvantage with new boyfriend Steven (Robert Emms), a youngish elder transplanted from London. Alex thumbs a pamphlet of “kids who died for Jehovah”, knowing that she might have to do the same. Teenage pregnancies aren’t the only thing the church won’t tolerate.
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