Unable to suspend my disbelief of the "processing" scene
I've read in a few places how wondrous and astonishing this scene is, how perfect the filmmaking is...
But it simply makes no logical sense to me, and nothing like it ever has in film. Why are people so quick to believe that simply by repeating questions to someone over and over (a shrink to a patient, an interrogator to an accused criminal, etc.), the questioner will then suddenly, magically, "break through"?
But of course, every time, those epiphanies and confessions magically follow.
Never bought this trope in anything else, why would I buy it here? Am I missing something?
Additionally, and somewhat off-topic but maybe not entirely off-topic, I did not care for this film. If you're going to present a "flat" narrative, without plot points or a conventional story arc, the characters damn well better be interesting to watch, and I found neither of the leads interesting characters (not to say the performances were poor, just that the characters to me were your more-or-less standard cult leader and your more-or-less standard angry, drunken, dim-witted veteran).