States of Mormon cinema

Today in the Daily Universe there was an article (which I’d link to but the BYU web servers have been in a most finicky state these past few days, flickering on and off like a lightning storm) about Richard Dutcher and his movies. “I’m not comfortable with the title of the father of LDS cinema,” he says, “because the children don’t seem to want to listen.” And he goes on to say that, “The end is in sight absolutely…. Mormon cinema has become nothing like I thought it would be.”

I’ve seen “God’s Army” and “Brigham City,” but haven’t yet seen “States of Grace” (I mean to, though, soon). From my perspective, Dutcher does well in trying to move away from the Halestorm comedies (which seem to be in a rut and I doubt they’ll ever get out), but he still doesn’t hit it on the mark. What Mormon cinema needs is great movies, at a level like the classics of literature. We need movies that speak to the depths of the soul while soaring to the heights of the human experience. Yes, life is hard, and it certainly ought not to be portrayed as rosy goodness all the time in every film, but I do believe there’s a right way to do it — one not very well achieved in many of the Mormon films I’ve seen, including Dutcher’s. In contrast, the new Joseph Smith movie did have its dark moments and used them well. Since I haven’t seen “States of Grace” yet I’ll refrain from commenting further on that, but I’ll be sure to post again once I’ve seen it.

Anyway, I can see the potential — real movies that sink deep and live on in the audience’s memories, truly great cinema that moves and lifts and carries to new vistas — and we’re getting there, but not quite yet. If any people should sense the true grandeur of life on this earth and of that which is to come, it’s us.

One last comment: by this I don’t mean that all the truly great movies are epic. I see greatness in the smallest life, the very human and very real day-to-day choices and interactions which may seem mundane to some but in actuality strike at the very core of human experience. Greatness is everywhere to be found, if we but go a-looking for it.

Having said all that, I can’t just sit around and do nothing. And so once again the urge to write a screenplay returns. Guess I’d better start reading screenplays to get a feel for how it’s to be done. (Incidentally, CeltX is a nice program which helps with the formatting and a lot of other things as well.)

While I think that Richard Dutcher makes some great points when asked about the state of “Mormon Cinema.” I wonder if many times he (and we, for that matter) are missing the point. Mormon Cinema is not a genre, it’s a demographic. While most of the movies made by and for a mormon audience are self parody (home teachers, singles ward, etc.), mormon filmmakers should think more about who they are trying to reach, rather than what their subject matter is.

That reminds me of something C.S. Lewis said, and one could well apply it to Mormon art as well — we can’t just write books about Christianity, but we also need Christians to write books about gardening and art and politics, and their Christianity will be evident. While it would be nice if Mormon-themed movies were able to make it in the mainstream (and for the Jews, Fiddler on the Roof did just that), but I suspect that we’ll do more good by creating films that speak to a larger audience by not being about Mormons while still retaining our Mormon values. I do think we also need movies about Mormons, but if that’s all we’re doing, we’re not going to make it. What we do need is better scripts, better acting, better everything. In some areas we’re doing okay, but in others we’re not. To me, there are still no truly great Mormon films, period. There are some decently good ones, but nothing that ranks on the greatness scale like Shakespeare and Dickens do for literature or Mozart and Beethoven do for music.

[…] Other posts I’ve written about Dutcher: States of Mormon cinema, God’s Army, Dancing on the edge, and At the edge. After seeing the preponderance of edge-related titles, I couldn’t help but continue the trend. :) […]