Cult-ivation

SING HO for the life of middle class America, burdened with enormous taxes, college tuitions, and unappreciative children. Also large, split-level homes and two-car garages. In Split Image, the Stetson family doesn't have it so easy. Despite a burglar alarm and extensive insurance, these upstanding citizens lose their son--body and soul--to a cult.

We've heard and seen it all before. The media have spent much of the last ten years waging an all--out campaign attempting to expose cults and the bizarre processes by which they transform normal kids into zombies. Ranging from candid autobiographies of ex-moontes to last year's Ticket to Heaven, the steady stream of exposes has touched a popular nerve. Yet concern has reached a threshhold level. What the market needs now is a movie that reveals the cure, and not just the prognosis.

Although Split Image doesn't manage to come up with a cult scenario. It does have a few things in its favor--for instance, its cast and its glimpse into suburban life. Unfortunately, its plot only updates a typical cult scenario with scenes designed for a 1982 teenage audience. It's not that cult sex is uninteresting; it's just not enough to create an award-winning film.

Our hero, Danny, is a typically good-looking, suburban jock. His parents drive a Volvo, his golden retriever goes to doggy school, and his kid brother watches video-cassettes all day. Yet there's a void in Danny's life. At some point in his golden youth, something snaps--he trades in his already paved road to success for possessionless servitude in a cult. Michael O'Keefe--the blue-eyed actor last seen as the disturbed son in The Great Santini--does a fine job portraying the troubled Danny. Yet his precarious insecurity, although true to life, becomes unconvincing in the context of some of the movie's other, more outrageous characters.

Through a series of events, climaxing in a weekend retreat. Danny enters the eerie world of "Homeland" Although he is initially drawn to the group by a woman--Rebecca--whom he meets in a restaurant, he soon fails under the spell of the cult's leader. Neal Kirklander (Peter Fonda). An incredible synthesis of Jim Jones, the Reverend Moon, and Jesus Christ. Kirklander completely dominates his followers lives. At a spacious country estate, he entertains his "guests" in barrack-like dorms and large meeting rooms (With its white-stone facade, the compound looks more like an architect's model than a religious center) They dine on protien-free "moon-food" and meditate a lot. With a surprising lack of resistance. Danny succumbs almost eagerly to the mindless ecstasies Kirklander and Rebecca offer.

As the deprogrammer who saves Danny, James Woods is the perfect foil for the maniacal Kirklander. Over-acting at every turn, Woods makes even the cult leader look human. By the time he gets his clutches on Danny--ostensibly to save him from the cult--he's behaving just as despotically as his arch-rival. The two men look strikingly similar and have so many of the same insane idiosyncrasies that by the end of the movie we're not sure that Danny's isn't just being converted to another obsession.

CHARACTERS LIKE WOODS would have been much more effective if the movie had stuck to one main plot instead of trying to generically represent cult life. But with numerous stars who participate in too many subplots, we lose track of the central theme. For instance, important scenes between Rebecca and Danny are interrupted by scenes involving Danny's parents and the basic running of the cult. The difficulties--both physical and emotional--that the lovers encounter in their relationship reflect the movie's inability to point our attention in any one direction.

Ironically, the movie's most poignant moments center around the older Stetsons (Brian Dennehy and Elizabeth Ashley). Both Dennehy and Ashley are superb as parents caught completely offguard by their son's defection to a world of make believe. They cling together as they try to retain their grip on their own values which Danny's indoctrination into Homeland has shaken. Should they feel responsible for failing to provide their son with an idealistic, equitable world? Should Danny blame them for his vulnerability to the hypnotic world of the cults?

Such questions, unfortunately, are left completely unanswered. Split Image falters in its inability to tie off all (or any) of the loose ends. If a movie raises such large issues--such as the values with which we indoctrinate our children--then it should at least try to come up with some solutions.