"Dutcher Tells the Stories of Jesus"

A number of LDS filmmakers exist, and a bunch of LDS films have been made by them.

Yet there is still only one Richard Dutcher.

With only three films under his belt, he has defined the top echelons of LDS cinema. He created the genre with his first film. He enriched it beyond the mundane with his second.

With his third, he transcended anything any other LDS filmmaker is doing.

Dutcher shows his soul through his films. It's the soul of a true believer who is fully committed to the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's a soul that knows how to apply the gospel in real lives, not in Flatland characters. And it's a soul that is fully an artist, one who knows how to communicate his stories with images that rip open the soul of thousands of others and drive the point deep where it can never escape again.

God's Army was pure novelty: an LDS film in the mainstream theaters. It was good, but didn't have to be too good because it was new. It had depth, but didn't need intense depth because people were just glad it existed.

Brigham City raised the bar. It delved into the grittiness of real life and showed how the gospel can apply there too. It showed the strengths and the weaknesses of LDS people, LDS culture. Its mystery plot was thoroughly mediocre, but that wasn't its point. In the end, Dutcher delivered his power punch that taught seasoned, even jaded, members of the church the meaning of the sacrament all over again.

States of Grace enacts an acrobatic quantum leap into realms that no LDS filmmaker dared tread before. He raised the stakes, and the jury is still out--has barely begun deliberating--whether any other LDS filmmaker has the courage to follow the trail he blazed. Gang violence, illicit sex, grittiness that makes Brigham City's grittiness look like cupcake sprinkles. Actual respect for other religions even! The audacity!

And in the end, the now characteristic power punch ending (absent in God's Army) delivers a sermon on the atonement and the love of Christ more powerful than fifty-two weeks of church-going Sundays will ever deliver.

But it's still not the Great LDS Film. It's still not his masterpiece. Journeyman level, certainly. But he's just getting started.

From a structural point of view, States of Grace is acceptable but not outstanding. If it seems innovative, it's only within the context of LDS cinema. It would be lost in the crowd of Hollywood films.

The film is riddled with derivative motifs. The very approach of involving gangs is a cliche by now. One extended scene would be powerful if it wasn't so reminiscent of the final climactic scene in The Godfather. And a subplot character reeks of deja vu vibes from Robert Duvall's The Apostle.

But States of Grace is NOT a mainstream Hollywood film. It's an LDS film. Within this genre, it's innovative, showing that LDS cinema lags decades behind Hollywood from an artistic standpoint, but is going in the right direction. My money is on Dutcher for being the one who first catches up and starts being innovative in an absolute sense.

In an absolute artistic sense, that is. From a moral standpoint, Hollywood has lost its way long ago and fritters around in a shallow pool of moral triviality. Hollywood uses powerful skills to tell stories that are all too often vacuous. There are exceptions, as with the Lord of the Rings series and The Passion of the Christ, but these aren't quite Hollywood either.

In this arena, Dutcher commands. Not even Mel Gibson's Passion communicates the power of the atonement in as intimate a fashion as Dutcher does in States. Gibson shows us the horrific grandeur of Christ's sacrifice. Dutcher shows the personal depth and power of its reach to the individual. What sophistication in delivery that he may lack, he more than makes up for with the raw intensity of his story.

For Dutcher is quintessentially a storyteller. He's still mastering the tools of his cinematic trade, but his stories are sublime. They are real. They are meaningful. They are laden with the power of conviction and of genuine caring.

Those who would object to States of Grace for moral reasons have lost the ability ot see life as Christ sees it: the prodigal son who returns from riotous living, the missing sheep or coin that causes rejoicing when found, the publican who walks away justified from the altar because he debased himself instead of the Pharisee who lauded himself.

These are the stories that Jesus told, and these are the stories that Dutcher is now telling. Jesus came to heal the sick, not the scrapbookers and the Deseret Book patrons. Dutcher is telling the stories of the sick, and how Jesus can heal them.

D. Michael Martindale