we didn't know what we were getting into...
Wesla and I love to go to the Movie Mill. It is a great little theater that shows old films at a discounted rate. Often, if we feel like being lazy on a Saturday afternoon, we will see what is playing on the Mill Website and we head 'er on out.
The following description for a movie called The Work and the Glory sounded interesting to us, especially since Wesla likes the "pioneer" time period:
In November of 1833, the state of Missouri turned a blind eye as hundreds of its peaceful inhabitants were hunted down and driven from their homes in the dead of night. Against this impending strife, a young man with a divine vision leads a people against the aggression of an anti-hero with a vulnerable past.
We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into...
Check out The Work and The Glory website for yourself if you like, we should have done that before we watched the movie. It turns out that the movie is the second part of a series of fictional books about Joseph Smith and the LDS church called American Zion.
On one hand, the movie was remarkably well done. The acting was superb, the sets and the costumes were top notch, and the plot really was quite interesting - in fact at the beginning of the film I couldn't quite tell if Smith was going to be portrayed as a messiah or a quack, it turned out that the former was the case.
As the movie progressed it became abundantly clear that it is a "soft-sell" evangelism tool for the Mormon faith. I don't object to Joseph Smith being portrayed on film, nor do I have anything against the LDS church telling a story that reflects upon the persecution they endured in the early part of the 19th century. What I do have a problem with is not being told that I am going to watch a movie about Joseph Smith, and then I sit down to watch a movie and it is all about the Mormon patriarch. In my humble opinion the promotional description of the movie deliberately leaves out the fact that the "hundreds of peaceful inhabitants" who were being persecuted were Mormon, as to not scare off potentially unsuspecting viewers from hearing their proselytizing message.
Obviously, there were several elements of the movie that got my back up. I will save my ranting to a few of the finer details.
First, everyone who was not a Mormon in the movie was portrayed as either a drunk, a gambler or a raving bigot who was out to kill the morning. Throughout the film the audience was led to identify a "doubter" who was slowly coming around to the faith, and to pity one of the sons of the doubter who was persecuting the faithful. Each argument directed toward the main character who was questioning the faith was a not so subtle apologetic directed toward an unbeliever in the audience. It was masterfully woven together, and it really ticked me off.
Second, several parallels in the movie were made between Joseph Smith and Jesus Christ. The most offensive moment to me was in one scene where Smith was in prison getting beaten up by a bunch of heathen thugs. They had Smith's eyes covered and they yelled at him, "Testify to us prophet, which one of us has struck you!" On another occasion, Smith had an encounter with an orthodox minister that was strikingly similar to many of Jesus' contests with the Pharisees. In the end Smith heals a crippled woman's hand. I was waiting for him to walk on water, but maybe they are saving that for the third installment of the series.
Finally, this is a movie based upon a fictional series of novels, but the audience is steadily left with the impression that it is retelling the historical events of the first days of the LDS church. Because this is a work of fiction, the author is free to take as much artistic license as s/he wants and the audience is left with no idea where historical reality ends and where imaginative reconstruction begins. My feeling is that many people would watch the movie and not question the historicity of many of the events that were portrayed in the film.
This experience has really made me think twice about evangelism, and how it feels for someone to be blindsided by it when s/he is least expecting it. If I was so upset by this experience, how often do we, as Christians, impose the same kinds of feelings upon others.
The following description for a movie called The Work and the Glory sounded interesting to us, especially since Wesla likes the "pioneer" time period:
In November of 1833, the state of Missouri turned a blind eye as hundreds of its peaceful inhabitants were hunted down and driven from their homes in the dead of night. Against this impending strife, a young man with a divine vision leads a people against the aggression of an anti-hero with a vulnerable past.We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into...
Check out The Work and The Glory website for yourself if you like, we should have done that before we watched the movie. It turns out that the movie is the second part of a series of fictional books about Joseph Smith and the LDS church called American Zion.
On one hand, the movie was remarkably well done. The acting was superb, the sets and the costumes were top notch, and the plot really was quite interesting - in fact at the beginning of the film I couldn't quite tell if Smith was going to be portrayed as a messiah or a quack, it turned out that the former was the case.
As the movie progressed it became abundantly clear that it is a "soft-sell" evangelism tool for the Mormon faith. I don't object to Joseph Smith being portrayed on film, nor do I have anything against the LDS church telling a story that reflects upon the persecution they endured in the early part of the 19th century. What I do have a problem with is not being told that I am going to watch a movie about Joseph Smith, and then I sit down to watch a movie and it is all about the Mormon patriarch. In my humble opinion the promotional description of the movie deliberately leaves out the fact that the "hundreds of peaceful inhabitants" who were being persecuted were Mormon, as to not scare off potentially unsuspecting viewers from hearing their proselytizing message.
Obviously, there were several elements of the movie that got my back up. I will save my ranting to a few of the finer details.
First, everyone who was not a Mormon in the movie was portrayed as either a drunk, a gambler or a raving bigot who was out to kill the morning. Throughout the film the audience was led to identify a "doubter" who was slowly coming around to the faith, and to pity one of the sons of the doubter who was persecuting the faithful. Each argument directed toward the main character who was questioning the faith was a not so subtle apologetic directed toward an unbeliever in the audience. It was masterfully woven together, and it really ticked me off.
Second, several parallels in the movie were made between Joseph Smith and Jesus Christ. The most offensive moment to me was in one scene where Smith was in prison getting beaten up by a bunch of heathen thugs. They had Smith's eyes covered and they yelled at him, "Testify to us prophet, which one of us has struck you!" On another occasion, Smith had an encounter with an orthodox minister that was strikingly similar to many of Jesus' contests with the Pharisees. In the end Smith heals a crippled woman's hand. I was waiting for him to walk on water, but maybe they are saving that for the third installment of the series.
Finally, this is a movie based upon a fictional series of novels, but the audience is steadily left with the impression that it is retelling the historical events of the first days of the LDS church. Because this is a work of fiction, the author is free to take as much artistic license as s/he wants and the audience is left with no idea where historical reality ends and where imaginative reconstruction begins. My feeling is that many people would watch the movie and not question the historicity of many of the events that were portrayed in the film.
This experience has really made me think twice about evangelism, and how it feels for someone to be blindsided by it when s/he is least expecting it. If I was so upset by this experience, how often do we, as Christians, impose the same kinds of feelings upon others.
posted by Jason at 1:59 p.m.
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