User Score
4 votes
“The cradle will rock”
In a new town with a new baby and a husband who has to work all the time, a young mom gets involved with the highly popular local church. The preacher’s wife welcomes her with open arms and she enrolls her baby in the church’s daycare which is run by the preacher’s wife. Slowly but surely, it seems as though the preacher’s wife is taking over as the baby’s main caregiver and framing the new mom as an unfit mom.
Director
Writer
Status
Released
Original Language
EN
Dan
Roughly chronological, from 3/96 to 11/96, with a coda in spring of 1997: inside compounds of Aum Shinrikyo, a Buddhist sect led by Shoko Asahara. (Members confessed to a murderous sarin attack in the Tokyo subway in 1995.) We see what they eat, where they sleep, and how they respond to media scrutiny, on-going trials, the shrinking of their fortunes, and the criticism of society. Central focus is placed on Hiroshi Araki, a young man who finds himself elevated to chief spokesman for Aum after its leaders are arrested. Araki faces extreme hostility from the Japanese public, who find it hard to believe that most followers of the cult had no idea of the attacks and even harder to understand why these followers remain devoted to the religion, if not the violence.
