Split Image, a film about cult worship in the United States, suffers from an
ambivalent, unfocused script and from being at least two years behind the cult
worship phenomenon.
The film isn't as good as R. M. Thomas' Ticket to Heaven, a recent
Canadian feature on the same subject that failed miserably at the box office.
Still, allowing for its limitations and problems, Split Image is an
intriguing film whose chief strength is in the quality of its cast and the
performances they deliver. Michael O'Keefe, the sensitive son in The Great
Santini, delivers an equally strong performance here as Danny, a young college
athlete drawn into a cult presided over by a charismatic leader (Peter Fonda,
in one of his best roles in recent years). James Woods (the psychopathic cop
killer of The Onion Field) enlivens this film with his interpretation of a
deprogrammer hired by O'Keefe's parents (Elizabeth Ashley and Brian Dennehy) to
kidnap O'Keefe from the cult and restore him to his family.
Split Image contains some good scenes including some especially dramatic
moments of O'Keefe being indoctrinated. As the megalomaniacal cult leader,
Fonda delivers some inspired rationales on behalf of his utopia. The scene in
which O'Keefe is "born again" with a new name is as compelling as the
transformation from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde.
In the most riveting scene, O'Keefe proves his assimilation into the cult
by giving a seemingly spontaneous demonstration of speaking in "tongues." It
sounds like deranged gibberish. But again, as in the "born again" scene,
O'Keefe's physical transformation into fanaticism is what draws the attention.
He looks monsterish.
Also dramatic are some of the scenes in an extended sequence in which
O'Keefe is deprogrammed by Woods. The drama is intensified by its special
effects. Hand-held cameras and a fish-eye lens distort the images, giving
O'Keefe's deprogramming a hallucinatory quality.
One of the more imaginative script devices is to have O'Keefe drawn into
the cult when he catches Karen Allen looking at him in a malt shop. Assuming
she's interested in him sexually, O'Keefe tries to pick her up. Allen responds
to O'Keefe on a loftier spiritual plane. But her conversation is so ambiguous
that O'Keefe can't understand what she's talking about. The viewer is the only
one who appreciates the whole dynamic: Allen's references to spiritual love
being interpreted by O'Keefe as a new kind of sexual come-on.
Had its dramatically disparate scenes and sequences been linked with any
kind of rhythm or logic, Split Image might have been more powerful than it
is. As is, it can't rise above the level of an interesting failure.
Copyright © 1982 Globe Newspaper Company