It was my privilege to attend a showing of Witnesses last night. Similar to others' experience, my girlfriend and I were the only two people in the entire theater. (In FAIRness, though, it was 9:45 p.m. on a weeknight, so there's that.) Beforehand, I tried hard to decide whether to clear my mind and approach this film as though I knew nothing about Mormonism, or whether I should approach it from my actual perspective, that of a disbeliever in Mormonism who was familiar with all its controversies and was ready and able to spot any potential glossovers. In the end, though, I decided to set any preconceptions aside and just watch / enjoy the show on its own merits, ignoring any previous reviews to the extent that I was able.
WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!
My general impression:
Do you all remember the short film Legacy that screened in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building next to Temple Square for several years? If so, then the general feel of the movie was quite similar to that. So, yeah, it was like one of those church-sponsored and produced films, but slightly better 'cause it at least touched on a number of the more difficult aspects of church history. For one quick example, all officially-produced and commissioned films show Joseph Smith as a perfect and Christ-like figure, whereas Witnesses took a risk and hinted at his legendary temper in a few places.
Overarching plot:
A reporter shows up to the business of the elder David Whitmer, asking for an interview about what he saw. After a bit of curmudgeonly recalcitrance--an approach I was very surprised that the filmmakers took, 'cause I had always pictured the witnesses as being ever-willing and eager to share their testimonies--David finally comes around at the last possible moment and agrees to be interviewed. The two talk all through the night and into the morning, with David's narration thereby becoming the narration of the film. It covers the time period from Joseph recovering the plates to near the end of the Far West, Missouri era--when the Witnesses were expelled from the church--plus a little time on their fortunes in later years.
The good parts, from least to greatest:
- As others have mentioned, the cinematography was very good, so there's no need to dwell on that. The 1800s feel and ambience was remarkably well-captured. (I wasn't around in the 1800s, though, so I have no way of knowing for sure whether I'm right.) The music was also exceptionally good for an independent film.
- DCP and his wife were billed in the opening credits as the executive producers. I wasn't quite sure of his specific role, so this answers that question. Either way, although I know nothing about the movie industry, I am quite awed that he can maintain a job as a college professor AND be the executive producer of a movie at the same time. Perhaps being an executive producer only means raising the money and subcontracting the actual movie-making to a third party, but still, considering how involved *I* would want to be in a project so dear to my heart, it rather boggles my mind that he was able to do both.
- Throughout the movie I was VERY shocked that it was made with a budget of only one million dollars. This was no slipshod college production; it was INCREDIBLY well-made for such a low budget film. Watching it, you'd think ten times the money was spent to make it.
- There were two times when I found myself "floating" to my TBM days. Once was when we hear Sidney Rigdon preaching for the first time, the second was at the very end of the film when we hear David Whitmer's final testimony and see an excerpt from the reporter's eventual story on the screen regarding his (Whitmer's) clear integrity. FULL DISCLOSURE: Honesty compels me to admit that I became a bit misty-eyed both times, especially at the end. If I wasn't afraid of losing my ex-Mormon credibility to my girlfriend, I just might have shed actual tears.
- Joseph Smith's hairstyle was completely ahistorical throughout the film. The real guy sported a pompadour, not the 80s cut that this Joseph had.
- The ultimate fate of the plates was never mentioned. I'm pretty sure non-Mormons will pick up on that and wonder what happened to them.
- The background music was needlessly intense / loud in places. Sometimes less is more.
- As others have stated, the story seemed to jump around quite a bit. I'm familiar with church history, so I could sort of keep up with the geographical locations--and, in FAIRness, when the time and location changed there was a subtitle listing the year, the city, and the state--but I'm a visual learner so it might've been nice to have an Indiana Jones-style graphic showing the locations on a map and thus the movie's westward progress from one place to the next. Plus, the locations looked quite similar from one to the other, and much of the action took place indoors, so in FAIRness to DCP it might've been unreasonably difficult to alleviate this issue.
- The dialogue was a bit too stilted for my taste, as though the scriptwriter was trying just a bit too hard. For example, the line was something like "Of course, Joseph, of course" instead of the more believable "Yeah, sure." Or "No, I will not" instead of the more natural "No I won't." See what I mean? It was like this throughout the whole film. Maybe they were trying to create what they thought was a 19th Century vibe, but regardless, the language was a little too close to General Conference-ese for my taste. I strongly believe that it would've been much more believable--and enjoyable?--if the dialogue was more colloquial.
- Although the end credits contained a disclaimer that some events had been dramatized for, uh, dramatic effect, there were two scenes that were completely made-up (to my knowledge) and therefore somewhat off-putting to me. The first was the opening scene, split in half and revisited at the end of the movie, wherein David Whitmer is dragged out of his home by a mob and made to kneel on platform along with two others, then threatened that he'll be shot unless he denies his testimony. I don't recall reading about this ever happening. The second scene involved a courtroom trial in which Lucy Harris brings a lawsuit against Joseph Smith for fraud. I don't remember that ever happening, either. To make matters less believable, Joseph was being tried in absentia and wasn't even in the courtroom! CORRECTION: I was wrong; these two scenes were based on written--if little-known--accounts after all. See this post by Tom to read them.
- Although all the difficult / embarrassing pre-Nauvoo occurrences were touched upon, most of them were done with the ABSOLUTE minimum-ness necessary for the producers to truthfully say, "You see? We covered everything!" Unfortunately for the viewer, the solutions to these issues were quite often less-than-truthful. For example, the rock in the hat was shown, but Joseph's face was NOT "buried" in the hat to exclude the light, as all of us clearly know from the written accounts. He simply looked into the hat from a short distance. In my opinion, it's better to simply not show something at all than show something that isn't true. Non-Mormons will probably ask, "What's the point of the hat? Why not just put it on the table in front of him?" Another example that jumped out at me was the reasoning behind the Kirtland Bank failure: Not enough people deposited their money into it to provide collateral for all the bank notes that it had printed. Therefore, in the movie, the members were blamed for withholding their funds. Clearly, however, a bank can easily avoid such a failure by never printing more notes than it has funds deposited. . . a fact that I imagine all non-Mormons will quickly pick up on, especially if a prophet is at the bank's head. (Another reason given for the failure was that Warren Parrish had embezzled $80,000 worth of bank notes, but wasn't an overabundance of bank notes being in circulation the whole problem to begin with?) A third example was when a disgruntled investor reminded Joseph that the bank was prophesied to succeed, but Joseph counter-reminds him that it would only do so if run on principles of righteousness. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't remember any such disclaimer being in the Doctrine & Covenants. Not only that, but a non-Mormon might ask, "What specific 'principle of righteousness' would've prevented the bank's failure?"
- There was way too much "telling" and not enough "showing." For example, David Whitmer narrated on a couple of occasions that converts showed up by the wagonload (or something like that). Rather than just believe him, it would've been far better to show shots of outdoor sacrament meetings becoming more and more populous or, at minimum, actual lines of wagons arriving. Also, Oliver Cowdery confronts Joseph about Fanny Alger, but Fanny is never shown. It would've been far better to show Joseph and Fanny gazing lovingly at each other over a picnic lunch or something, and Oliver catching sight of this, prior to said confrontation. Third, Joseph, the witnesses, and a couple of others are shown having an intense, or perhaps "heated," discussion over what to do about Hyrum Page and his revelations through his own seer stone. But alas, Hyrum Page, like Fanny Alger, is never shown. It would've been far better to have seen Mr. Page doing his thing prior to the others' conversation about it.
- Lastly, David Whitmer's narration, and the questions from the aforementioned reporter, contain MANY references to "the angel," "seeing the angel," "saw the angel," etc. Therefore, somewhat akin to the above regarding telling but not showing, near the end of the film I was internally screaming, "SHOW ME THE ANGEL, DAMN IT!!" (Folks, I can't possibly over-emphasize that last sentence. Imagine never finding out what happened to the T-1000 at the end of Terminator II.) The audience had already seen the plates from when Joseph retrieved them to the translation process, but alas, the angel is never seen. Bright light illuminates our witnesses for brief moments, implying his appearance, and at the end a bright, nebulous light source is seen at the bottom of the screen in an aerial shot, but, like I said, the angel is never seen, nor is his voice heard, nor do we hear the voice of God. For a film titled "Witnesses," it seems like a very, very odd detail of their lives to omit. Like, wasn't that the entire point? And wouldn't their experience be far more convincing, or at least moving, to the audience members, both believer and disbeliever?
FINAL THOUGHTS: Witnesses is nowhere near as bad as the critics say, but alas, nowhere near as good as the believers say, for all of the reasons I list above. As with most things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. This movie "is what it is," as they say, and it's MUCH better than anything the church itself would've produced on the same subject (I'll let you judge for yourself whether or not that's a compliment). Putting myself in its creators' shoes, Witnesses accomplishes exactly what they set out for it to accomplish. And as an ultimately well-crafted faith-promoting film, I'm very surprised--nay, flabbergasted--that word-of-mouth hasn't caused far, far more believers to fill the seats. I simply can't account for it.
2 stars.
