Worlds Apart Critique

Worlds Apart Review
By Isaac Carmignani

Worlds Apart is a movie that does that magical thing that is so necessary in telling the JW story. It is a story. It touches the heart. It refrains from going into long and potentially boring dialogue on the real, alleged, or perceived fallacies of Watchtower teachings. Yet it manages to address nearly all of the major doctrinal flaws. Through conversations between the characters we learn about the blood issue, date prophecies unfulfilled, being expelled merely for sleeping over at someone's home of the opposite sex, children being baptized, shunning, kids leaving school to pioneer, the betrayal by close friends, the hypocrisy of close friends, the hypocrisy of elders who want forgiveness but won't forgive others, the conflicts inside Witnesses, the dignity stripping judicial process, the hype at conventions where examples paraded before the membership often are struggling with the religion themselves, and so much more.

Even though the movie is subtitled in English the actors show emotion in their voices, facial expressions, and body language. This fills in the gaps.

The movie is accurate in many small details such as in the look and color of WT publications.

The translation seems well done though some of the terms used in the English do not fully reflect JW speak. But that is minor and would never be noticed except by JWs closely scrutinizing the movie. Other details that I picked up were that JWs were portrayed as not being allowed to vote, which is technically no longer true. (Of course in practice JWs don't vote anyway since it is still heavily discouraged.) One other point to note is that JWs close their eyes when praying.

Recent developments in the organization are also captured such the change in disfellowshipping (expelling) announcement and the recent focus on Jesus as a kind and loving person.

I truly believe that this movie needs wide circulation. I would even be willing to help if I can be of assistance. People in the general population need to see this.

A footnote: This movie received a 7.2 IMDB rating.