The Work and the Glory is probably the most popular series of novels in LDS history. I don't know how many copies of the books have been sold, but I know many ward members and friends and family members who have read the entire series. I haven't. I checked out the first volume from the library, read perhaps the first third of it. It just didn't engage me, and I eventually returned it unread. So in reviewing the movie, I need to be very careful. The books are deeply beloved by my brothers and sisters in the Church, and also by my Mom. While the film didn't engage me either, I want to review it honestly and, I hope, with some small insight, but I also don't want to dismiss the genuine affection so many people have for these characters and this story. It's clear that the purpose of the books and the movie is to bolster faith, to lead people to a deeper understanding of the founding Mormon narrative, a narrative I also believe in and which is also at the center of my own faith. The release of this film becomes a major Mormon cultural event. That's not something we should just dismiss.

Before the screening I attended last night, we heard brief comments from a number of dignitaries, including the producer, Scott Swofford, Director Russell Holt, Larry Miller, who funded the project, Jeff Simpson, representing Excel, which distributed it, and of course, the writer, Elder Gerald Lund. I think it was Larry Miller who pointed out that "Hollywood" had been interested in this project for years, but that Elder Lund had insisted on retaining editorial control. The only producer who was willing to sign over creative control was Swofford, which is why he ultimately got to make the film. Driving home afterwards, my wife and I amused ourselves by playing the paranoid fantasy game--imagining the various inanities "Hollywood" producers might have foisted upon this text. But watching the film, you realize what that Elder Lund was quite sincere when he said that this film is what he wanted. It's a deeply conventional piece of institutional filmmaking. I suspect Elder Lund wanted a film that looked like all the other films the Church produces. That's anyway what Swofford and Holt gave him.

The fact is that the Church produces many many films, for CES, for Visitor's Centers, for instructional materials, and that many of those films deal with our founding narrative. The Work and the Glory: Pillar of Light begins, as so many of them do, with a closeup on the details of 19th century cooking. How many times have we seen it-a tight shot on someone's hands kneading bread, or cutting vegetables, or getting something from an oven, then the camera pulls back and we see a 19th century domestic interior. There's the backlit shot of people riding horses and wagons silhouetted against a horizon, with swelling music under it. There's the obligatory crane shot of Joseph Smith in the Sacred Grove--we need to see that moment, for some reason, from God's POV. There's the constant, unremitting underscoring, with inspiring music pumping up every emotional climax. There's the facial hair �ber signifier: bad guys have beards, while good guys remain clean shaven. (In this film, Joshua Steed is clean shaven early in the film when he's still reasonably sympathetic, starts growing a beard after he's estranged from his family, and has a full chia pet bush on his face at the end of the film, when he's a wanted criminal, card cheat, and what's worse, Missourian). Well, Martin Harris has a neatly trimmed beard, because we all know what Martin Harris looked like, but it's very short and neat, while the bad guys, the Murdochs, all have really scraggly, slovenly beards. Ben Steed, the family patriarch, is hostile to Joseph Smith and a harsh and difficult man, and he's clean shaven too-the actor, Sam Hennings, has a face carved from granite, and is the most consistently compelling presence in the film. But Ben deeply loves his children and wife, and besides, he's going to soften towards the Church in the next movie, right? We know he will, because he gets to shave.

The cinematography is lovely, with lots of soft focus shots of beautiful western New York scenery; in fact, the film begins with a helicopter shot of western New York that's breathtaking. The film's production values are generally first rate. That's hardly surprising-they had enough money to make a great looking film. Well, most institutional films produced by the Church look great. The Church's film people can afford to shoot on film, and they can afford good cinematography.

What this adds up to is what looks like an old fashioned Hollywood epic film from the '50s. It suits the story, which is similarly conventional. Basically, it's structured around two love triangles. Lydia McBride (Tiffany Dupont), is torn between her love for the two Steed brothers, Joshua (Eric Johnson), and Nathan (Alexander Carroll). Then, when Joshua turns out to be a bad 'un and she casts her lot with Nathan, she's torn again, because he's become a Mormon, which her parents can't abide--not that she likes that about him herself. When she finally reads the Book of Mormon and is converted, she embraces Nathan, and that's the film. The ending-crane shot overhead as they embrace amid the house he's building for them--gets the full symphonic treatment from Sam Cardon's musical score, but it's frankly pretty flat, in part because of Carroll's limitations as an actor, and also in part because it's all so predictable and conventional-my wife's reaction was "that's it? That's the end of the movie?"

The film is also structured around what we might call a series of zinger scenes. A zinger scene goes as follows: a sympathetic character faces down either one or a crowd of unsympathetic characters. Sympathetic character finishes with a zinger line, usually along the lines of "you ought to be ashamed of yourselves." The unsympathetic characters hang their heads for a few seconds. Cut away.

This happens repeatedly in the film. Joseph and Emma Smith are walking down the main street in Palmyra. They're surrounded by a rabble--lead by the unshaven Will Murdock (John Woodhouse). Nathan Steed stands up to the rabble, and tells them they should all be ashamed of themselves. They are, and slink off. Nathan wants to give Lydia a Book of Mormon, but her parents intercept it and throw it out. She discovers their perfidy, calls 'em on it, while they hang their heads. Nathan also wants to give a Book of Mormon to his mother. Ben tells her she can't read it. Nathan tells his Dad he should be ashamed of himself. Ben mopes around for awhile, then changes his mind--she can read it if she wants to. Joshua, now a successful Missouri businessman and card cheat (and a terrible person, based on how bushy his beard has gotten), wants to go back east "on business." But his pretty, abused looking, blonde Missouri squeeze calls him on it--he doesn't want to go "east" on "business," he wants to see Lydia again. Joshua looks suitably abashed, but in this case, goes "east" anyway.

What this series of zinger scenes does is flatten the main characters, increase the moral polarization that's the hallmark of movie melodrama. Joshua Steed is potentially a complex and interesting character. But in this film he's almost comically sullen. The interaction between Joseph Smith and the good citizens of Palmyra was complex and multidimensional. There was surely a middle ground; people who rejected the message of the Restoration, but who respected the Smiths as an industrious and close-knit family. But in this film, the zinger scene encourages us to think of Palmyra township as consisting entirely of either Smith supporters (and future Church members), or potential mobocrats. Lydia's parents have reason to be concerned about their daughter's romantic involvement with a farmer infatuated with the town eccentric. (Their concerns are even more justified given her very questionable conduct by the standards of well-brought up young middle class ladies in the early 19th century). The zinger scene involving them reduces the central conflict of the film's third act structure. If Lydia is genuinely torn between her love for her parents and her love for Nathan (which is complicated by his exasperatingly inconvenient testimony), then treating her parents as villains stacks the deck for viewers, tells who to root for. By the end of the film, the only genuinely complicated character is Ben Steed. As a result, he dominates the last half of the picture. This isn't perhaps a bad thing. But the film's protagonist is Nathan. And he's such a badly underwritten character, his steadfast assertion of testimony has little dramatic impact or resonance. (Carroll's performance doesn't help.)

The novels-and the film-are what we call historical fiction. But what's interesting about the film is the way in which the history half of that equation is presented. I know that on AML-List, Thom, among others, has argued that the novels are historically inaccurate. Historical accuracy seems to me, however, a very problematic issue.

History is a narrative; it's the way we structure and make sense of the past events that are at the foundation of our culture. I may argue, for example, that George Washington was a deist, and that representations of him that foreground his comments about "divine providence" present a misleading picture of the man. But for some people, the "American narrative" they find most persuasive is one that argues for a divine presence leading the destiny of an exceptional nation. I think there's considerable evidence that would complicate and undercut such a narrative. But which is the more "historically accurate?" Well, it comes down to evidence, to which pieces of evidence we think are the most significant, and the narrative(s) we consequently construct around that evidence. And there's plenty of room for the construction of multiple narratives.

So we have a Mormon narrative in which Joseph Smith is troubled by religious revivals in upstate New York in 1820, goes to the sacred grove, prays, is visited by Heavenly Father and Jesus, is subsequently visited by Moroni and told of the Book of Mormon, is persecuted and so on. That's the narrative we find in the Pearl of Great Price, for example. It's the mainstream historical narrative believed by most active Mormons, and the one either ridiculed or politely passed over by those outside our culture. Are there other, competing narratives? Surely so; one is that the whole story is fraudulent, and Joseph Smith a charlatan. In recent years, new Mormon history has discovered and/or foregrounded evidence that complicates matters. The story of the First Vision wasn't recorded until many years later, and apparently was not a major part of Mormon preaching in the earliest days of the Church. Other evidence suggests that Joseph used a seer stone to search for buried treasure as a youth. Is that evidence reliable? Polygamy apparently began a good deal sooner than we usually think of it beginning, and was a good deal stranger than most active Mormons are comfortable contemplating. Should it be incorporated into the Mormon historical narrative? And so on. For simplicity's sake, lets say there are three main narrative threads: the "faithful" narrative, the "fraudulent" narrative, and finally, the "new Mormon history complex narrative," which itself incorporates many different narrative strains.

The Work and the Glory isn't interested in these sorts of historical debates. Elder Lund is content to stick with the mainstream historical narrative we read in The History of the Church, and because he's writing fiction, he's able to gloss over some of the trickier issues in Mormon history. He's telling, after all, the story of Mormonism through the lens of one fictional family, who only know the part of the story that directly concerns them. They hear the two main narratives: Joseph is a prophet, or Joseph is a fraud. Most members of the Steed family believe in the "faithful" narrative. Joshua Steed rejects it, but he's also a bad seed, a wanted criminal and a jealous lover. Ben Steed doesn't know what to believe; as the film ends, he's genuinely torn. As for the more complex range possibilities we find in new Mormon history, they're just not part of what Lund's trying to accomplish. The Steeds are able to not worry about them, because they're not part of their own family's interaction with Joseph Smith.

So those folks who say "the books aren't historically accurate" really mean is "there's a more complex narrative that might be presented here, and the evidence for complexity is strong." I happen to agree with them. I think that telling the story of Joseph Smith and ducking the issue of polygamy borders on historical absurdity. But I'm not Gerald Lund. He's trying to tell one story, the mainstream "faithful" narrative that forms the bedrock belief system of active Mormons. And I'm sympathetic to this approach too, because I do believe in the First Vision; I believe in the Pearl of Great Price. And I think, despite his vaunted historical research for these books, Elder Lund isn't actually interested in history at all. And despite the fact that he's written a series of novels with reasonably interesting stories and characters, I don't think he's actually all that interested in fiction either. I think he's interested in faith. I think he wrote the books to bolster the faith of Mormons, and perhaps also some people outside our faith, to provide them with a positive emotional experience which might, for some, lead to a spiritual experience. Mormonism does not, after all, depend on history. Mormonism ultimately depends on the spiritual experiences of those who read and pray about certain texts.

In other words, Gerald Lund has written a series of books that are not just novels, and not just historical novels, but faithful historical novels. And that emphasis on faith, on providing Mormon readers with a positive emotional experience which might lead in turn to a positive spiritual experience, helps explain the very strange way in which history is presented in the film.

Introducing the film last night, a couple of the speakers mentioned Lund's historical research, the hundreds of pages of notes he keeps in cupboards in his home. Most of that research, I expect, has more to do with the needs of a novelist than with the needs of an historian; lots of research into the details of everyday early nineteenth century American life. The costumes, the settings, the house interiors and the details of farm equipment and the shelves of the McBride's dry goods store, all that was clearly meticulously researched and presented in convincing detail.

And then the actors open their mouths and speak the most appalling anachronisms. "Okay," "I have a problem with that," words and phrases that simply were not current in 1830 abound. I need to watch the film again on DVD so I can compile an appropriate list, but I was cringing in my seat nearly every minute of the film. Neither of the Steed boys, courting Lydia McBride, once refer to her as "Miss McBride;" she's always "Lydia." (It would not have been unusual for 19th century married couples to eschew the familiar, and refer to each other as "Mr. and Mrs.") Lydia herself is a piece of work--we first see her coming down a staircase, her dress hiked up around her ankles--is she supposed to be a strumpet? But no, she's not--she's supposed to be a well-brought up and virtuous middle class young lady. In another scene, she frets that visiting Nathan without an invitation--just dropping in on him, without a chaperone--will be considered forward. Uh, that's well beyond forward--in her day, that would be considered the behavior of a shameless hussy. That's nothing compared to the scene where she sneaks away from home in the middle of the night, to go to the roughest part of town, to make out clandestinely with her dockworker boyfriend. Her parents are wealthy enough to send her to an Eastern boarding school, but they're not wealthy enough to hire a clerk for their store--no, there Lydia is, waiting on customers. A single young woman, working in a dry goods store. So what we have here is a film made by and for puritanically virtuous Mormons, depicting a cultural moment obsessed with puritanical virtue, and they decide that one thing they're just not going to worry about getting right is female virtue. They decide they can be casual when it comes to portraying the behavior of a proper young lady.

When it comes to sets and costumes, the film gets pretty much everything right. The look of the film is persuasively authentic. I didn't see a set or costume that struck me as out of place or inappropriate or unbelievable. In every other sense, the depiction of history is quite mad. My favorite thing in the film is the use of guns. Apparently, these people routinely left those touchy primed and loaded flintlock pistols just laying around, so that someone could snatch it up when they needed to aim them threateningly at someone. Never mind that loading and priming a flintlock took minutes, and that a weapon left primed and loaded for more than a few minutes was certain to misfire. The guns are indicative of problems we see throughout the film: nearly all the dialogue and essentially all the depictions of 19th century cultural practices were seriously anachronistic. What's going on?

I have to believe that all this was intentional. I have to believe that Elder Lund really has done all the historical research he says he has, and that he knows, for example, that the Steed boys, courting Lydia McBride, would call her "Miss McBride." But for audiences today, 19th century courtship formality would probably sound stiff and stuffy. I think Elder Lund knows all about 19th century flintlocks. But audiences today are accustomed to seeing people do what they're told when someone waves a gun in their face. So all the preposterous gun stuff in the movie doesn't seem preposterous; it's what we're used to from movies.

Introducing the film, Larry Miller told a story about one of his employees, who hadn't read the novels, and then saw the movie, and was so impressed he went straight out, bought the first volume, took it home and read until four in the morning. "He told me he'd gotten to page 115," Miller told us all approvingly.

I know I risk appearing condescending here. But I'd like to suggest that most of the folks on AML-list, if we began a book at, say, 10 at night, and read for 6 straight hours, would get a heck of a lot farther than page 115. Especially an easy read like The Work and the Glory. I know my wife would certainly have finished volume one that night, and be well into volume two, and I expect that's generally true of most avid readers. When you do something a lot, you tend to get pretty good at it, is all I'm saying.

What this story suggests is something I need to tiptoe around a little. I think The Work and the Glory series are novels for people who don't read very much. I think most LDS people don't actually read very much. And The Work and the Glory is historical fiction written for people who really haven't immersed themselves in history or literature, but who want whatever they read to provide a positive emotional experience, and a faith-promoting religious experience. I suspect that that's why the movie is so strange; the director knew the audience wouldn't notice the glaring anachronisms, and just respond positively to what's at its heart, a conversion story.

So much of the success of the film comes down to Joseph Smith, played, in this version, by Jonathan Scarfe. And the scenes involving Joseph are reasonably effective. He's got a hint of a devil-may-care grin in a stick pulling scene when he conclusively defeats Joshua Steed, and I liked that; he's not quite as stiff as he's often portrayed. The scene where he tells Nathan about the First Vision was nicely underplayed. As a film that's mostly trying to present the faithful Mormon narrative, it's quite successful.

I think it's going to be a successful film in the LDS market. It's too old-fashioned and institutional to have any impact at all outside Mormon culture. As someone who loves the Church, I was pleased to see a film which presents the faithful narrative in a compelling and attractive way. As someone who also loves film, I cannot recommend it. It's a remarkable cultural artifact. It's perhaps best to leave it at that.

Eric Samuelsen