Witnesses: The Reverend’s Review

[Philo Sofee]

Perhaps sometime in the future I'd be able to divorce myself from the parent church's influence over this and turn off the propaganda, focusing on the other aspects of the movie. I suspect, though, that I would be screaming inside for the entire story to be told, warts and all. That's not necessarily inspiring but more interesting. I like heros with flaws and in Mormonism, the founders can't have too many, at least the flaws can't be admitted.

Yes! I would love to see characters who are the more colorful people described in the full range of early sources. One character I found incredibly disappointing was Joseph Smith, Sr. The real man was an alcoholic who was deeply into treasure digging, folk magic, universalism, etc. I imagine he could be kind of embarrassing to the rest of the family. And yet Joseph loved his father very much and wanted to see him in the man he constructed in his scriptural heroes. He wanted a Lehi for a father, and his dad was not quite that. Still, making him Church patriarch did invest him with that gravitas and charisma. Missing very much is the treasure digging. Wow. How can you not have that?

It would be fun and interesting if we could pool all our talents and money together and make our own version...

[Gadianton]

Is this not what those who have stayed in the fold yearn to see validated as they think of their friends and family who have lost heart, been offended, and strayed from the fold?

I think you nailed it as far as the value goes to the Mormon community, whether or not it was intended. But as you point out, two hours? Sounds like another round of Saturday priesthood session.

I think what the movie was going for is precisely what is written in DCPs review, which was written as if it were after the fact and as if he wasn't connected to the project. Strange, given that the witnesses knowing each other supposedly doesn't matter. It sounds like, in your opinion, that the movie was able to escape its evil designs and be better.

Maybe these men weren't so much of witnesses to a miracle, but witnesses to a community suddenly struck with purpose, and returning to that was like returning to your hometown before you die?

[Kishkumen]

It would be fun and interesting if we could pool all our talents and money together and make our own version...

That would be awesome indeed! I want a film that does not *translate* the history into the language of the present and the language of faith. Mind you, I am not upset that Witnesses did these things. That was to be expected. But I want to see something that captures all of the raw eccentricity of the Smiths in their time.

Another major missing element is Native American people. It is mind boggling how white this film is, when the book was translated to convert Native Americans to the gospel. So where are they? In reality, the presence of Native Americans all around with the attendant curiosity it raised was a major motivation for the whole movement, so the absence of these people is a huge gap in the movie.

And it is not just they who are missing but the Nephites and Lamanites also. The Book of Mormon chiefly exists as the plates and certain brief passages of sermon or doctrine that highlight the spiritual content of the book. The combined absence of Native Americans and ancient Nephites completely changes the story.

I can think of several reasons for these choices. First, bringing in the Native American element would have been politically delicate and downright hazardous. Also, including dramatizations of Book of Mormon “times” would add a lot of extra expense. Finally, the focus is really on the witnesses and their experiences, and the questions addressed are primarily these: Did you really see an angel? Were there really ancient plates?

The answers to those questions sometimes hew closely to the ones we are accustomed to hearing from apologists. How could Joseph Smith, an unlearned young man, produce such a large volume of scripture in such a short amount of time? This comes in the Whitmer interview, which, as I have already opined, might have been best left out for sake of time and capitalizing on the emotional power of the best parts of the historical narrative scenes.

[Kishkumen]

I think you nailed it as far as the value goes to the Mormon community, whether or not it was intended. But as you point out, two hours? Sounds like another round of Saturday priesthood session.

So, yes, I am first of all trying to take the film on its own terms. I think this is a movie for a primarily white, middle class American LDS viewer, whether fully faithful and active or otherwise. There is nothing really unfamiliar or challenging to those people who live in that world and may have encountered a couple of challenging issues (Fanny Alger, Kirtland Safety Society).

Now that I have mentioned it, I think the coverage of the Kirtland Safety Society's collapse is another highlight of the film. It is interesting to see the characters, including Joseph Smith himself, struggle with the impact that this failure has on their community and Joseph's confidence in his own divine calling. This event is depicted as really shaking the community, and so I give it high marks for addressing some of the challenging aspects of that. Warren Parrish really comes off as the villain. He is blamed for stealing bank notes, and then he subsequently organizes his own church on the idea that Joseph failed. So, one infers that the movie makers want to stress that Joseph's failure was one of lack of experience, whereas some other folks in the background were likely engaging in real skullduggery and thus truly the ones at fault.

So, I have to disagree with your assessment to a certain degree, Dean Robbers. The film is a lot more interesting than Saturday priesthood session, and it is more challenging, and yet, like your favorite amusement park ride, it gives you the feeling of danger while returning you to the platform safe and sound. You always had a shoulder restraint holding you in the car, preventing you from flying out of the rollercoaster. That said, sometimes the best precautions still fail, and in this case I would say that the Fanny Alger incident sticks out like a sore thumb. Since the film never really develops or explains this in any depth--you would have to be a really well informed person to follow this brief exchange between Oliver and Joseph at all--if you managed to remember this and took off to the internet to look it up, you would have been in for a huge shock. After all, the Fanny Alger incident happens several years before Nauvoo polygamy and the idea that the union was legitimized by priesthood authority or viewed as a marriage is still contested.

The film's coverage of the Alger incident deserves its own post.

I think what the movie was going for is precisely what is written in DCPs review, which was written as if it were after the fact and as if he wasn't connected to the project. Strange, given that the witnesses knowing each other supposedly doesn't matter. It sounds like, in your opinion, that the movie was able to escape its evil designs and be better.

The point about the witnesses already knowing each other was another noticeable exclusion from the film. We see clearly that Whitmer and Cowdery know each other, but there are so many connections that are not covered at all. Martin Harris' own attempt to search for the plates without Smith and in the company of Samuel Lawrence is something that of course has no place in the film. You get the misleading sense that Smith is known to Whitmer and Cowdery primarily by reputation, when that is obviously not the case at all.

And yet, I would still say that the movie does transcend its makers' agenda sufficiently to make it worth watching. I believe this to be true primarily because they were interested in engaging with the issues of uncertainty and doubt in the struggles of the characters. I was impressed by the way the viewer was invited to witness and experience Martin Harris' personal struggles. Now, I did not like the way his wife Lucy came off as a shallow busybody-shrew--that was one of the more offensive parts of the movie--but I did like the fact that Martin is shown pressing Joseph for more evidence in a way that shows he was not simply credulous. He felt he needed more proof to go on in order to justify, not only to his spouse and family but to himself, his investment of time and money in the endeavor of translating the plates.

In individual scenes you saw the filmmakers really put thought into the complex relationships and personal psychology of the various characters. This is why I really liked the movie. For me the Hiram Page incident was my favorite. It is treated entirely in one meeting in which Page is not present, and Cowdery, Whitmer, and Smith are the principal figures, but the way the argument unfolds and Smith eventually asserts himself through "the voice of the Lord" struck me as pretty true to life. I did appreciate the almost seamless way in which Joseph flipped into being an oracle, and the impact this had on the other characters. He just starts speaking as "the Lord" and you witness a relatively subtle shift in the demeanor of the guy who plays Smith. There is no halo of light or booming, echoing, reverb-laden voice, but a clearly discernible shift that marks Smith's oracle mode.

That is interesting.

Maybe these men weren't so much of witnesses to a miracle, but witnesses to a community suddenly struck with purpose, and returning to that was like returning to your hometown before you die?

The miracles are important, but the sense of purpose and community are much more so. Here is where the single journalistic review is dead on. Reflecting on this through the eyes of someone like Shulem, I could totally see this film as a gay love story with Joseph Smith as the charismatic hotty who talks the guys pining after him into doing what he thinks they should do. Now, I don't want to sound critical here, but the way that jealousies and moments of peak experience play out, you would almost think that these guys were secretly in love with Joseph and only felt truly complete when he was with them. In this way, the film is not unlike certain films about Jesus, where the longing for Jesus and the effect he has on his male companions borders very strongly on homoerotic.

This effect is accentuated in this film by the fact that they chose an actor for Smith who looks more like a catalog model than a rugged backwoods character. I don't know about others, but when I triangulate Smith's image from the evidence we have available, I see possible charisma, but I don't see a catalog model. And yet, here, in this film, the filmmakers seem to have chosen someone with very traditional but boring good looks. I think the filmmakers made a mistake in this, even though the actor playing Smith does a decent job of playing the part.

One scene of male bonding really stuck out in my mind. At one point in the film, the viewer is shown Cowdery embracing Smith from behind Cowdery's back. The scene is set up like some sort of glorious, transcendent experience, and yet there is a moment in which a dissonant note is struck. After the camera pulls in to their heads and the scene is wrapping up, with Smith's face in the direction of the camera, the final look in Smith's eye is just hollow. Dead. It happens for a fraction of a second, but it really makes you pause. The guy playing Cowdery is obviously emotionally wrapped up in the embrace, but for just a fraction of a moment the guy playing Smith looks completely absent, and that is a moment you don't want to appear in the film if you have the agenda these filmmakers seem to have had. Or is it? I think we need to ask just what it is Smith is up to. That is never resolved in my mind.

In other words, despite the film's best efforts to impress us with the struggles and tenacity of the witnesses, we are left wondering what exactly it is that these guys really experienced. The character who represents the skeptics is the journalist who interviews Whitmer. He asks the questions many of us trot out regularly, but he is good natured and reasonably respectful toward Whitmer. Here is where I felt that the filmmakers do acknowledge there is a gap some people will not be willing to bridge in order to embrace Mormon claims, but that it can end in a live-and-let-live appreciation and respect; it need not be a bitter and hostile antipathy between people of irreconcilable views.

There is another moment that runs parallel to this, and I would say purposely so. This really is a film of the present moment, one that captures what we have experienced in the American Mormon arena for about 15 years or more. On the one hand the outsider is represented by the journalist, but the other outsider is the mob that grabs Whitmer from his home and places him on a platform in front of a crowd of hostile people. The mob is transparently supposed to be the Christian opposition to Mormonism. Full of ignorance, hate, and fear, these people want the Mormons gone. What reveals the filmmaker's purpose, and its structurally parallel position to the reporter's interview, is that when Whitmer boldly testifies OF CHRIST, the leader of the mob is taken aback and his attitude does a complete 180. He calls off the lynching and the crowd disperses.

This mob scene prompts us to imagine how an LDS person would like to see Christians who do not understand and accept them realize that LDS people are, first and foremost, Christians too. This was a real President Nelson part of the film, in my view. Indeed, the film seemed to account very well for Nelsonian LDSism in a number of ways, and this one was the most obvious.

[Tom]

Thank you for the thought-provoking post and comments, Kish. I do hope that the university will convene a symposium on the film this fall and that you will deliver the plenary address. My helpmeet and I sharply disagreed about the quality of the film, but I won’t get into that here. If you don’t mind me asking, do you plan to see it again in Utah, what did your father-in-law think, and how many people were in the theater yesterday?

[Kishkumen]

Thank you for the thought-provoking post and comments, Kish. I do hope that the university will convene a symposium on the film this fall and that you will deliver the plenary address. My helpmeet and I sharply disagreed about the quality of the film, but I won’t get into that here. If you don’t mind me asking, do you plan to see it again in Utah, what did your father-in-law think, and how many people were in the theater yesterday?

I am really interested in seeing learned commentary on the movie. As a cultural artifact it is incredibly fascinating, in my view. I can see you and your "helpmeet" sharply disagreeing on the quality of the film. It really has very appealing and interesting aspects to it. On the other hand, it is not great cinema, nor do I think that anything of this sort, considering the parties involved, has any hope of being great cinema. That said, very few films are, and most of them are garbage. I choose to look at it as a genre film, just as horror movies are genre films. The question is not whether in an ultimate sense this is high art. The question is whether it does anything interesting and worthwhile within its own genre. Thus I think the only way to judge this is as an example of "period piece" Mormon historical film like Legacy. I enjoyed Legacy well enough, but it was more obviously purely sentimental and propagandistic than Witnesses.

I probably will not see the movie again in Utah. I am going to spend some time with my father as of this evening, and he has little interest in Mormonism beyond its role in our family's history at this point. When I took him to Sunstone, he had a difficult time stomaching the more emotional and sentimental sessions, which prompted him to grumble under his breath and emphasize how he does not believe in the supernatural. I can't imagine my father enjoying this film.

My father-in-law is a much more interesting case. He didn't want to see the movie. He would not have seen the movie unless I had asked him to go. I had assumed that he would be surprised and delighted to take me, but I was wrong. He treated it like he was doing me a favor by going, and he was somewhat bemused by my desire to go, since he knows that I am not an active, believing LDS person. I think he was slightly worried that my entire reason for wanting to go was to be ironic. At one point in the film he nodded off. Now, he is pretty elderly, and he can fall asleep practically anywhere, but I think a better-paced and better-focused narrative would have kept him gripped. At the end, he said it was "OK." I got the feeling that it was not as bad as he had feared but nevertheless not really great in his opinion.

He told me on the ride home that he finds the events of the Restoration to be too sacred to capture in film and that attempts to represent them in this medium strike him as kind of sacrilegious. I understand what he means, and I think he has a real point.

The theater was pretty empty. I would say there were maybe a dozen people scattered around the theater. I didn't notice any big reactions to the movie from other viewers, and I got the sense that people were pretty self-conscious about reacting in one way or another. I did hear reactions, but they were fairly subdued. I often could not tell whether they were snickers or approving reactions--they might have been one or the other. One thing that really intrigues me about the film is the reaction to it, or lack thereof, in Utah, the veritable Capitolium of Mormonism.

[Dr Exiled]

There is another moment that runs parallel to this, and I would say purposely so. This really is a film of the present moment, one that captures what we have experienced in the American Mormon arena for about 15 years or more. On the one hand the outsider is represented by the journalist, but the other outsider is the mob that grabs Whitmer from his home and places him on a platform in front of a crowd of hostile people. The mob is transparently supposed to be the Christian opposition to Mormonism. Full of ignorance, hate, and fear, these people want the Mormons gone. What reveals the filmmaker's purpose, and its structurally parallel position to the reporter's interview, is that when Whitmer boldly testifies OF CHRIST, the leader of the mob is taken aback and his attitude does a complete 180. He calls off the lynching and the crowd disperses.

This mob scene prompts us to imagine how an LDS person would like to see Christians who do not understand and accept them realize that LDS people are, first and foremost, Christians too. This was a real President Nelson part of the film, in my view. Indeed, the film seemed to account very well for Nelsonian LDSism in a number of ways, and this one was the most obvious.

This is another bone of contention I have with Mormonism. It wants respect on its own terms. It floods the world with missionaries, bothering people, trying to tell the world what to do, asking fealty to Nelson or whomever is the current leader, and money of course. Then disingenuously, the brethren ask why people "persecute" them, if persecution is even the right word. Probably it is similar to what would happen if fundamentalist Mormons started going door to door trying to reconvert members back to polygamy. There would be push back by the faithful and perhaps a more strong reaction.

In the case of Missouri, the story isn't told from the above perspective and cannot be as that would perhaps kill the victimhood Mormonism has tried to develop over the years. Mormons flooded into Missouri with claims that Missouri was their land and God's, with the implication that it was only a matter of time before the Missourians would have to give up their property rights to Joseph Smith and his magic stone. Of course the mob became enraged. It was more than religious differences. It was political and concerned property rights. Also, claims of being the one and only tend to turn people off and invite push back. However, this will never be told and is part of the problem with the faithful view of history. This doesn't excuse crimes committed by the Missourians nor those of the Mormons either. However, it's one thing when immigrants move into an established community and try and get along and another when the immigrants come in claiming that they are the real rulers of the land, sanctioned by God.

[Kishkumen]

This is another bone of contention I have with Mormonism. It wants respect on its own terms. It floods the world with missionaries, bothering people, trying to tell the world what to do, asking fealty to Nelson or whomever is the current leader, and money of course. Then disingenuously, the brethren ask why people "persecute" them, if persecution is even the right word. Probably it is similar to what would happen if fundamentalist Mormons started going door to door trying to reconvert members back to polygamy. There would be push back by the faithful and perhaps a more strong reaction.

I think it is pretty human to want respect on one's own terms. It doesn't really work out, and so compromises are inevitable. At the same time, I don't dismiss the sense of marginalization as imaginary and unjustified. I think a large number of people are prejudiced against Mormonism and that this prejudice is in some ways completely unjustified. But yes, no doubt LDS leaders would not look kindly on polygamy recruiting efforts.

In the case of Missouri, the story isn't told from the above perspective and cannot be as that would perhaps kill the victimhood Mormonism has tried to develop over the years. Mormons flooded into Missouri with claims that Missouri was their land and God's, with the implication that it was only a matter of time before the Missourians would have to give up their property rights to Joseph Smith and his magic stone. Of course the mob became enraged. It was more than religious differences. It was political and concerned property rights. Also, claims of being the one and only tend to turn people off and invite push back. However, this will never be told and is part of the problem with the faithful view of history. This doesn't excuse crimes committed by the Missourians nor those of the Mormons either. However, it's one thing when immigrants move into an established community and try and get along and another when the immigrants come in claiming that they are the real rulers of the land, sanctioned by God.

Yes! The story is very narrow and one-sided. You are absolutely right. All of these real-world concerns and complications are omitted from the film.

AND YET . . . .

We are treated to a heated argument between Cowdery and Smith on the subject of personal property rights versus the law of consecration! Cowdery insists he has rights to his own property as an American citizen, whereas Smith reminds him that they are trying to build Zion. I found that exchange interesting, and the issue of property and wealth almost rises to the level of a leitmotif in the film.

[Gadianton]

There is another moment that runs parallel to this, and I would say purposely so. This really is a film of the present moment, one that captures what we have experienced in the American Mormon arena for about 15 years or more. On the one hand the outsider is represented by the journalist, but the other outsider is the mob that grabs Whitmer from his home and places him on a platform in front of a crowd of hostile people. The mob is transparently supposed to be the Christian opposition to Mormonism. Full of ignorance, hate, and fear, these people want the Mormons gone. What reveals the filmmaker's purpose, and its structurally parallel position to the reporter's interview, is that when Whitmer boldly testifies OF CHRIST, the leader of the mob is taken aback and his attitude does a complete 180. He calls off the lynching and the crowd disperses.

Brilliant, Reverend. Were any of the characters intended to represent Doctor Scratch?

[Kishkumen]

Brilliant, Reverend. Were any of the characters intended to represent Doctor Scratch?

Excellent question, Dean Robbers. I don't know. It is possible but perhaps more a matter of creative interpretation to see a Mopologist's view of Doctor Scratch in Warren Parrish. It seems to me that Parrish is being painted as a character who is exploiting the Gospel for his own ends. He is accused of stealing from the Kirtland Safety Society and he starts his own congregation as a conscious and deliberate repudiation of Joseph Smith. Since Mopologists tend to depict Doctor Scratch as being an evil, mentally unhinged person, you have to look to a Warren Parrish or Lucy Harris in this film to find its Doctor Scratch. The more I think about it, the more it works, because, like Parrish and L. Harris in the film, Doctor Scratch is painted as a two-dimensional caricature by the Mopologists, and these cardboard cutout characters in the film are similar in the way they are sketched only enough to be the "bad guys."