2000 AML Award for Film Presented to: Richard Dutcher For: God's Army Zion Films (Excel Entertainment Group), 2000. AML-List reviews by Andrew R. Hall, Eric D. Snider, D. Michael Martindale, D. Michael Martindale

When considering Richard Dutcher's film God's Army, the immediate temptation is to focus on this film more for what it seems to herald than for what it actually is. Since LDS filmmaking has now so clearly taken such a major step forward with the release of God's Army, cinema can now be said to have joined the conversation with our culture that so many LDS novelists, playwrights, poets and essayists have been engaging in for generations. God's Army seems to presage a movement, a renaissance, in which Richard Dutcher, in the best LDS tradition, plays the role of pioneer.

And yet we ought not allow the God's Army event to overshadow the film itself. And it's such a lovely, intimate film, a film of understatement and modesty. A powerful miracle scene is treated quietly, without intrusive underscoring or acting histrionics. A prayer scene is accompanied, not by violins or choral angels, but by the simple sound of a car engine sputtering to a start. The camera work is inobtrusive, and yet the camera is always in the right place, and the lighting convincingly captures the shabbiness of missionary apartments.

Dutcher's writing has the same understated complexity as we find in the best fiction of Doug Thayer or John Bennion. His characters are rich, multi-faceted, multi-dimensional. Dutcher's missionaries are believable both as young men and as God's servants, easily confused and yet also idealistic, given to practical jokes, but also capable of great faith.

The story of the making of God's Army, the struggle to raise funds and to find a distributor, is in many ways as inspirational as the film itself. God's Army is a fine and an important film, but it was also a commercial success. That may be the most encouraging thing about it. And so, the Association for Mormon Letters honors not only a remarkable piece of LDS writing, but also the work of a producer of courage and tenacity, a director of vision and imagination, an actor of sensitivity and insight, and a marketer of creativity and skill. It is not hyperbole to declare God's Army the most remarkable and important film in the history of Mormon letters. It is a pleasure to honor this extraordinary movie.

© 2001 The Association for Mormon Letters