It is impossible, I believe, to come to any work of art purely. We always bring with us our preconceptions, our hopes, our fears, our life experiences. And we've always heard something about it, read a review or talked to a friend or seen an advertisement. But when the subject of the work of art in question is as massive, as powerful, as loved and as reviled as the Book of Mormon, critical objectivity becomes all but impossible. I intended to see The Book of Mormon Moviee the way I would see any movie, treating it no differently than I would Freaky Friday or The Matrix. But it's not just any movie, of course.

I didn't hate it. It's clearly made in a spirit of earnest sincerity that I found myself responding to. There have been other LDS films that I left in a state of near despair. I didn't feel that way about The Book of Mormon Movie. It's an inept disaster of a film, but it's not cynically made, I think.

I expect that for much of the audience, it will provide a satisfying experience. It looks like a movie. The cinematography is generally competent, though at times the lighting was inconsistent, and for the most part sequences cut together plausibly, though they clearly did not shoot nearly enough coverage. You see actors in costumes that, though anachronistic and wrong, look plausibly like clothes from earlier times. The actors emote effectively. I hesitate to say 'the film is well acted,' because the creation of a dramatic character involves a collaboration between director, writer and actor, and in this case, the actors were not well served by their artistic collaborator(s). But Noah Danby, as Nephi, looks suitably determined when facing his brothers, and suitably moved when praying. He's a good looking young actor, with somewhat limited emotional range, but effective enough in the role. Narratively, characters who obey God prosper, and characters who disobey God do not. At the simplest possible level of medium and message, the film works effectively. For much of the audience, I expect this will be enough.

And now, I catch myself, because I was just about to write 'for more sophisticated audience members. . . .' and go on from there. That sort of arrogance comes far too easily to me, and I want to be careful here. It's perhaps more accurate to say that this is a film that situates itself on one side of what I see as a cultural divide, one found not so much in Mormon culture as in American culture at large. The fact is, there are a lot of people, including a lot of Mormons, who loathe most contemporary films. They don't just hate the violence and sexuality and profanity of Hollywood; they dislike the pace, the feel, the quick editing and pumped up sound tracks. Many of these folks do in fact love film as a medium, but they love older films, the films of Ford and Wilder and Wyler. And, of course, De Mille. (Some have criticized this film as 'De Mille with no budget. I don't see it that way. It doesn't have De Mille's flamboyant showmanship; it's a quieter film than that.) And on the other side of this divide are folks who love contemporary films, who can't wait to see the new Tarantino film, or the new Soderburgh. I suspect that Gary Rogers, who produced, wrote and directed The Book of Mormon Movie, locates himself on the other side of this divide than the side I find myself on.

At the same time, I have to acknowledge that the film does in fact fail. It doesn't work. It's a very poor film representation of a book that is important to me and to the shared faith of my brothers and sisters in the gospel. I want to explore the reasons for that failure, but I have no authority here. And I fear that my criticisms of the film won't lead to an improvement in the next film(s), if there are any, or lead to a deepened understanding of either film or Mormonism.

To begin with, the film is essentially undramatic. It almost completely lacks any narrative drive or thrust, any build-up of dramatic tension. Imagine, if you will, a film about a child dealing with schoolyard bullies. He has a number of encounters with those bullies, each of which follows precisely the same pattern, and in each of which our child emerges victorious in precisely the same way. That is essentially the structure of the Book of Mormon film. Laman and Lemuel threaten the safety of the group. Nephi prays. He defeats them, and Laman and Lemuel look abashed. Of course, in part we feel no rise of dramatic tension because we already know the story. But I think that if I didn't know the story, I would feel exactly the same way. In The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers, there's a moment where Aragorn falls off a cliff. I know that book nearly as well as I know the Book of Mormon. I know, for example, that The Two Towers is the second of three movies, that the third movie will be titled The Return of the King, and that the king who returns is Aragorn. I know he can't die. But I was terrified when he flew off that cliff, and deeply moved when I saw that he'd survived it. In The Book of Mormon Movie, the fault is in the script, in how it's structured. There's a fundamental paucity of imagination at play here, an essential flatness of vision.

This flatness shows up most clearly, of course, when it comes to character. The characters are written flatly, without nuance. They seem like stupid people, frankly. Early in the film, Lehi preaches to the people in the streets of Jerusalem. He says "why won't you listen to me! The city will be destroyed!" He repeats this message over and over, without variation. He offers no evidence for his claims, he does not explain why he feels as he does, he makes no mention of political or moral or social realities that might make his case more persuasive. He simply repeats the same message over and over again. And he comes across as simple minded. This paucity of vision and nuance and imagination is most damaging in what must be the most wrenching scene in the Book of Mormon, Nephi's killing of Laban. The film presents this dilemma straightforwardly, without nuance or ambiguity or even close to enough explanation. Nephi doesn't want to kill, and this voice tells him he must. "It is better that one man perish, then a nation perish in unbelief," the voice intones. And so Nephi kills.

In the Book of Mormon, Nephi agonizes over this incident at some length, essentially from 1 Nephi 4: 10-18. Nephi, led by the spirit, tormented in his heart, carefully reasons his way to a solution. It's not just a rationalization either; we later see he was right, in Mosiah, when we meet the Mulekites. It's a troubling episode in the Book of Mormon no matter how it's presented. But absent the element of reason, and also absent sufficient context, the scene becomes one in which someone is told by a voice that he needs to kill someone. And Jon Krakauer is proved right about us, and Dan Lafferty is vindicated.

Early in the film, Nephi is set upon by evil-doers, and rescued by Laman, and I felt momentarily hopeful. That moment was never repeated, very much to the film's detriment. Had the film shown some genuine affection between the brothers, shown Laman and Lemuel as something other than cowardly villains, it would have added some dimension and some perspective to the film's central relationships, those of the brothers. This would have, in turn, raised the stakes dramatically. Nephi could have been shown as someone genuinely torn, between belief in this mysterious God, whose voice and warning is so enigmatic, and his genuine respect and affection for his flawed but frequently good hearted brothers. But no. Laman and Lemuel were quite well acted, actually. You could see Mark Gollaher and Cragun Foulger both clearly making some effort to create more characters more rounded than the lines they were given allowed for. But this was not a film interested in doing what film does best, show us the way human beings are likely to act or feel in various circumstances. The film isn't interested in character or story. It's interested in preaching.

But the message it preaches is again, simple-minded. I do agree, in fact, that it's better to obey God than to disobey Him, and that that is one of the messages found in the Book of Mormon. But the Lehi depicted in this film hasn't the subtlety or the imagination or even the native wit to offer the world that sublime answer to the philosophical problem of evil found in 2 Nephi 2. The Nephi of this film hasn't the capacity for reflection or humility or anguish that finds expression throughout the book, or the gift for poetic expression we might assume for a man in love with the words of Isaiah.

The Book of Mormon is not, of course, fundamentally a book that tells a story. It is fundamentally a book preaching a certain message. But the messages found in the Book of Mormon are multi-faceted, often tragic, intellectually challenging, and above all, morally compelling. (Sin, in the Book of Mormon, for example, is always equated with a failure to care for the poor.) This film approaches the essential didacticism of its source as simple-mindedly, as reductively as it treats story and character.

Late in the film, Sam, who was generally a non-entity in the film, asks Nephi if he can seek out his brothers. It was a moving little scene, well acted by Kirby Heyborne, in which Sam expresses his love for Laman and Lemuel and a desire to find out what became of them. It was the first, and very nearly the only, genuine moment of human interaction in the film. It's promptly spoiled. Sam comes at night to a camp where Laman and Lemuel dance around a fire brandishing spears, very much like the rotten schoolboys tormenting Piggy in Lord of the Flies. Sam runs into a sentry, who turns out to be Laman's wife, who tells him that 'they've changed. Everything about them has changed.' I presume that this is in part intended as a veiled reference to that always difficult issue of race, that we're meant to understand that they now look like Native Americans. If so, I found it insulting and racist. And it's a shame, though, because Heyborne's performance in reaction shot is subtle and quiet and quite moving. Laman and Lemuel, on the other hand, look utterly ludicrous. And frankly comic.

Again, the film doesn't feel cynical; it's sincerely made, I think. But it's also ineptly made, and very often unintentionally funny. The dialogue is inconsistent. At times, it's American colloquial: i.e. "Okay, Nephi, if you say so." At other times, it lapses into the 'thee' and 'thou' faux Jacobean diction of the Book of Mormon itself. Laman and Lemuel say "I wish were back in Jerusalem. At least then, we'd have our possessions." And that clunky 'possessions' is jarring. Laban's costume includes this kind of metallic bib that flops against his chest, and that would clearly protect him in battle not at all. And his house has no one on guard duty, but five other guards who clearly wait, in full leather armor, in some back room, so that when he orders them to attack Laman, it takes them a convenient few seconds to respond. Apparently that most beloved of scriptures 'my father dwelt in a tent' is meant to convey that this wealthy merchant Lehi only had the one tent, with everyone else sleeping heaven knows where. My wife and I kept counting tents; they've got one, and then later, with no explanation, three. They have this big group wedding with Lehi's and Ishmael's kids, and then you see these eight young couples eagerly anticipating their wedding nights, and only three tents. You will be as astonished as I was, I predict, to hear Nephi's famous 'I will go and do what the Lord has commanded' line used as the punch line to a wedding night joke. I loved the moment where Nephi's voice over says, in tones of utter doom, 'and then our camels escaped,' while we see this one camel sauntering very slowly away. At another point, a voice over narration mentions Laman and Lemuel 'murmuring.' Cut to the lads, saying 'we've got to kill Nephi!' That's not murmuring, folks, that's a death threat. 'I hate this stupid desert, I hate eating fried lizard, my clothes itch, this sucks:' that would be murmuring.

The makeup design I found particularly revealing. Gary Rogers clearly wanted to acknowledge the fact that the family of Lehi would have been Semitic. And so Sariah gets this sort of walnut brown skin tone, which isn't matched by anyone else in the family. Nephi 'ages' by wearing a salt and pepper fake beard, but without age lines or crows feet. So even the makeup design is revealing: lots of good intentions, badly and inconsistently executed.

All in all, I applaud someone having the courage to make a film of the Book of Mormon, the tenacity to put together the funding and the creative team. But I can't applaud the film that results. It's not a film about the Book of Mormon, or of the Book of Mormon. It's an artifact of a particular cultural moment. It's a film without dramatic tension, honest human interaction, philosophical complexity or theological profundity, all of which I find in the Book of Mormon itself. It may well be a sincere and noble failure. But it is a failure.

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Eric Samuelsen
September 22, 2003