Final Rating: 2/5
On March 20, 1995, sarin gas was released on three lines of the Tokyo Metro by members of the new religious movement Aum Shinrikyo. The attack primarily targeted trains passing through Kasumigaseki, where the National Diet of Japan (the legislature) is located, directly targeting higher-level bureaucracy in the country. Thirteen people were killed, and fifty others were severely injured. In the aftermath, Aum Shinrikyo’s leader, Shoko Asahara, was sentenced to death along with thirteen of his senior followers, and the cult functionally ceased to exist.
In AUM: The Cult at the End of the World, directors Ben Braun and Chiaki Yanagimoto track Aum Shinrikyo from its beginnings all the way until the sarin attack and the aftermath. Founded during a new religious boom in Japan, Aum was popular with mass media and college students, thanks to the charisma of Asahara and his disciple Fumihiro Joyu.
Archival footage of Aum is plentiful, with the group appearing regularly on talk shows and news segments and even producing their own animations and publications. One of the film’s main talking heads is journalist Andrew Marshall, who reported on the group for Esquire. Aum is a group that made a big impact in Japanese media and politics and was visible to groups outside the country as well.
But aside from raw data and facts presented through graphs and images of newspapers, there’s little in the documentary that makes that impact felt. As a documentary, Cult is extremely dry, more a recitation of facts than an argument for why those facts actually matter. It’s not that there isn’t enough to talk about with Aum; in fact, there might be too much to talk about. The sarin attack wasn’t the first act of domestic terrorism committed by followers of Asahara.
Before 1995, the group had already carried out at least one other gas attack and several successful assassinations. Braun and Yanagimoto focus in on the other gas attack, but skirt past the other assassinations. When victims of the cult are mentioned by name in the ending sequence of the film, it’s easy to have completely missed the events being referred to.
As well, the cult’s various forays into ensuring their own legacy are largely omitted. This isn’t a big problem until the end, where those endeavours suddenly form a major part of the epilogue.
The directors’ approach to the topic feels incurious, getting their interviewees to recount rather than probe. This is a shame because of the interview subjects the directors managed to get. A significant presence is Joyu, Aum’s second-in-command who escaped persecution for the sarin attacks. Joyu now runs a controversial Buddhist movement called Hikari no Wa, but that’s not even hinted at until the end of the film.
Early on, the filmmakers include a segment from an interview of Asahara by Japanese media personality “Beat” Takeshi Kitano. It was essentially a puff piece and its inclusion begs the question: does Kitano regret his role in platforming a domestic terrorist? This isn’t a question the directors explicitly grapple with, but it might also apply to them. Like Kitano before them, should the directors of this film not have pushed their interviewees more?
How do the directors feel about their platforming of Joyu? Invaluable as a voice close to Aum, Joyu’s most well-known quality is his silver tongue and knack for propaganda.
What can the rise and fall of Aum teach us about mass media, new-age religions, and domestic terrorism? While the answer to this question isn’t completely brushed aside, Braun and Yanagimoto seem significantly more interested in dwelling on the past than looking to the future.
Thank you to MPRM Communications for the screener.
