A bleak but fascinating tale

Rating: 9/10 (11 September 2018)

The Jehovah's Witnesses were very much the Scientologists of my childhood, in so much as they came across as both mysterious and a little ominous.
From door to door they would traipse with calm but dogged determination, eager to share their literature, and impart their 'answers' to a wider audience.
Of course there was no real mystery at all, just a devout set of believers with a rigidly defined set of life rules that anyone with a modicum of interest - or more pertinently 'patience' - could very easily have discovered more about should they, just for once, have chosen not to slam the door in their faces.
The odd couple of stalwarts outside shopping centres or train stations-aside, they seem to have slipped somewhat from public consciousness these days, displaced by a tidal wave of far more topical unsavoury pressing religious issues of our day, but that's another story...
Refreshing it is then to be offered a glimpse into the curious world of Jehovah's Witnesses by way of Daniel Kokotajlo's excellent but rather austere tale, Apostasy.
Set in Oldham, Greater Manchester, it focuses upon a mother, Ivanna (Siobhan Finneran), and her two teenage daughters, Alex (Molly Wright), and Luisa (Sacha Parkinson), for whom a zealous belief in the doctrines forms the rigid backbone of their day-to-day existence.
Although Ivanna and Alex are unwavering in their belief (at least outwardly), Luisa has, with age, developed doubts, and on becoming pregnant, her own faith as well as that of her immediate family is to be sorely tested.
But on whom can she rely to guide her on her path into motherhood? And can her predicament ever be endorsed within the strict parameters of her family's staunch religious beliefs, and indeed those of the religion's 'elders'?
Director Kokotajlo was apparently keen that northern English acting talent should be afforded the limelight here, and in Siobhan Finneran, we are treated to a fine portrayal of a mother mentally conflicted between the iron grip of her religious devotion and her natural role as a caring mother.
Molly Wright puts in a tender performance of both innocence and vulnerability as youngest daughter, Alex, whilst Sacha Parkinson is cast well as Molly's wayward sister, Luisa.
Played out under a grey overcast Lancashire sky, Apostasy is never less than bleak in its outlook. Even the film's fleeting romantic interest seems somewhat tainted given the rather stony ground on which it is being asked to take root and flourish.
Kokotajlo's film seems as genuinely intrigued as it is disapproving of its subject matter, yet never is it damning or dismissive, instead it walks its viewer methodically through a succession of tough scenes that will doubtless dumbfound and frustrate through their pure indoctrinated illogic.
Blood may indeed be thicker than water, but it seems that it's no match here for the sheer viscosity of the doctrines of Jehovah, and those who so single-mindedly adhere to them, as ultimately will become patently and tragically clear.