For the past few years there has been a movement in American film you could call "The New Mormon Cinema." Young Latter-day Saint filmmakers (definitely inspired by the Sundance Film Festival which is held right in their own backyard) have been making inexpensive independent films that are targeted at the Mormon population that stretches in the west from Alberta in Canada down into Arizona and California (the so-called "Mormon Corridor.") Most of these movies have been really bad, cheaply done sit-com influenced "comedies" that have had absolutely no influence on non-Mormon audiences. (With the honorable exeception of Richard Dutcher, the director of good movies like the missionary drama God's Army and the thriller Brigham City.) Things began to change this year with widespread recognition going to the tough-minded World War II drama Saints and Soldiers and this twisted little comic masterpiece, Napoleon Dynamite.

Jared and Jerusha Hess are products of Brigham Young University's film school and they made ND with a bunch of their friends. The unspoken assumption of this film is that most of the kids are Mormons. Some critics who misunderstood the movie as "condescending" have no experience with real people like these. I live in rural Utah and I can testify that Hess is only mildly exaggerating. The critics somehow miss the love with which the characters are drawn, just as some Minnesotans weren't too thrilled with the Coen brothers' Fargo. Napoleon's pathetic older brother Kip has been singled out as particularly unbelievable. But believe me, Kips are a dime a dozen in Idaho (and Utah, too.) I saw this film at a dollar theater in Orem, Utah that was packed to the ceiling with an enthusiastic audience that didn't seem at all offended by the characters.

Napoleon himself is not so much acted as incarnated by Jon Heder, who would win some sort of Oscar if people could only see he was playing a role, not living it. Napoleon is the real nerd deal, not some idealized John-Hughes-style Hollywood version. You really feel the anguish of his life, even as it provokes guilty belly laughs. The genius of the movie is how the Hesses take the angst of Todd Solondz (Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness) or Jim Jarmusch (Stranger Than Paradise, Dead Man) and put their triumphantly, uniquely Mormon spin on it.

Hess is the second Mormon director, after Neil LaBute in The Shape of Things, to make reference to singer Elvis Costello (Napoleon Dynamite is one of Costello's aliases.) The movie Napoleon is as physically unprepossessing as Costello is, until he starts to sing. You see, Mormons are always worrying about what other people think of them, because of their long-time outsider status in American society. This overwhelming self-consciousness can make them feel as awkward and crushed by the culture as Napoleon is. But inside they just know they are as dynamic as the very name "Napoleon Dynamite." The opportunity awaits for them to strut their true stuff. An individual like Napoleon can't be destroyed if he doesn't want to be. There's something eternal in him that will win out. The importance of this thought is why the Hesses avoid the very appearance of sentimentality in their presentation of Napoleon. You have to learn to love him in spite of his monstrous imperfections, because he is human. And you rejoice in Napoleon's final dance, which is five or six of the most joyous minutes in a movie this year.

It's also important that Kip and Napoleon redeem themselves by reaching out to others not like them. Kip hilariously to La Fawnduh, and Napoleon to Pedro and Deb. The Hesses are brave enough to make sympathetic jokes about multiculturalism here. Certainly, Preston Idaho, won't save them; but maybe Detroit and Mexico will. I left Napoleon Dynamite with genuinely earned good feelings about humanity in general and the future of Mormon movies in particular.

R.W. Rasband
January 10, 2005

Here are some things I learned from watching the Napoleon Dynamite DVD which I finally got last week:

*The short student film Peluca which director Jared Hess did at BYU is a grainy. black-and-white miniature Napoleon (only the main character is called "Seth") and was shown at Sundance's smaller, bandit companion Slamdance, which enabled Hess to go on to make the feature film.

*Jerusha Hess, the co-writer and costume designer, was seven months pregnant during the filming of Napoleon which is confirmed by an alarming still photo on the set.

*Jon Gries, the actor who played Uncle Rico, doesn't eat red meat or dairy, which posed a problem because all Uncle Rico eats in the movie is steak and milk. You can see Gries spit out the meat into a napkin in one scene if you watch closely.

*Almost everything that happens to Napoleon really happened to either Hess or Jon Heder in real life--they owned moon boots like that, or they used to play slap-fight games with their brothers, the home phone had a long cord, they joined a dojo once, etc. etc. I thought the film's eccentricities were slightly exaggerated. I was wrong. Apparently it's not exaggerated at all. Heder even talks like Napoleon, without the flat affect. During the scene when Summer ditches Napoleon at the dance and Napoleon says "Maybe she went to the bathroom," Heder exclaims on the commentary track, "Stop being such a loser! Quit lying to yourself!"

*The movie's thrift store scenes were filmed at the Preston D.I. or at King's, a chain discount store with a toy department in the basement. (There's one in Heber City, too.) These low-budget locations partially account. for the retro look of the movie.

*A very funny scene was cut featuring Pedro telling a story about being possessed by the spirit of an evil taco. Hess said the same story was told to him by a man in Chicago "during my LDS mission."

*The wedding scene after the closing credits was filmed a year after the original film and after it had been released and began to get box-office and critical success.

*The White Stripes never allow their music to be used in movies, but Hess sent a tape of the film to Jack White; he liked it enough to allow them to use one of his songs over the opening credits.

*Napoleon was co-produced by MTV Films, a division of the evil MTV, which Ricks College tried to ban even in off-campus housing.

Some opinions I formed after watching the DVD:

*This film takes place in the milieu of the lower-middle-class rural West, which accounts for much of the retro atmosphere of the film; these folks just don't have a lot of money to spend on new stuff. This also may account for some of the hostility to the film from some eastern folks like Entertainment Weekly which put it on their 10 worst list. They are fascinated by big-city poverty, but those red-state hicks? Aren't they all just rednecks anyway?

*On the other hand: why did this film strike a nerve with a larger audience when the Halestorm films and The Work and the Glory didn't?

Partially because of the lack of specific LDS references, although I think a Mormon ethos permeates every frame of it. I also think it's because of Napoleon's charity, and its embrace of eccentricity and "diversity" (as much as I hate that cliched word.) Napoleon speaks for everyone who thought he was a loser at one point in his life for another. I'm afraid that a lot of Mormon art identifies with winners: the good-looking, successful elites of society, those who fit in spectacularly. Kind of like Summer and her clique.

R.W. Rasband
January 31, 2005