Heretic: Hugh Grant Terrorizes Mormons

It is hard enough serving as a Mormon missionary in liberal Boulder, Colorado. Trey Parker and Matt Stone did not do them any favors with Book of Mormon either. However, they are in for a truly harrowing ordeal when they are invited into the home of a cultural relativist with a nefarious interest in comparative religions. Prepare yourself to root for the Mormons in director-screenwriters Scott Beck & Bryan Woods’ Heretic, which opens Friday in theaters.

Supposedly, Mr. Reed’s wife is in the kitchen baking a blueberry pie. That is why they allow him to lure them into his house. Otherwise, being alone with a man would have been against the LDS rules for missionaries. It turns out the Church has good reason for these rules. It is snowing outside, but the girls are smart enough to recognize when it is time to retreat. Unfortunately, Reed keeps his home inescapably secured with Rube Goldbergian time locks.

Against their will and better judgment, Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton sit through Reed’s Michel Foucault-ish lectures regarding the commonalities present in most monotheistic religions. Their lives are clearly in physical peril, but Reed also hopes to endanger their faith. However, Sister Paxton, the more assertive and worldly of the two girls, realizes the more they challenge Reed’s arguments, the more their odds for survival improve. He will show them some shocking sights designed to shake their faith, but they are more resilient than he assumes.

Fans of the A24 brand of horror might be taken aback by many aspects of Heretic. For starters, the nonbelieving not-so-humanist is an absolute, undeniable monster. As screenwriters, Beck & Woods have their criticisms of Mormonism, but they are keenly sympathetic towards the two Sisters. In fact, they show that many of the lazy cheap shots lobbed at Mormons are exactly that: lazy cheap shots.

Although co-stars Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East are no longer practicing Mormons, they both grew up in the LDS Church and still maintain personal ties, so they keenly understood the missionary experience. They were also not inclined to trash the Church. That kind of sympathy and authenticity really comes through in their gripping performances as Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton. There is nothing cartoonish about their portrayals. Right from the start, we believe they are young women already somewhat stepping out of their previously sheltered existences, facing someone sinister and manipulative, well beyond their experiences.

What’s Still Wrong with Virginia

Screenwriter turned director Dustin Lance Black deserves some credit.  It is difficult to admit your indie labor of love just isn’t happening, but Black forthrightly faced up to the uniformly negative reception for What’s Wrong with Virginia at Toronto and headed back to the editing bay.  Unfortunately, the problems are just too deeply rooted in the film now simply titled Virginia (trailer here), which nevertheless belatedly opens in New York today.

Emmett’s mother Virginia is sleeping with Sheriff Tipton, the holier than thou Mormon state senate candidate in a judgmental southern town.  At least, she was until she became too great a political liability.  Emmett deeply resents Tipton for tarnishing his mother’s reputation with their brazen carrying-on.  Tipton wants no part of Emmett either and he expressly forbids the sullen youth from seeing his daughter Jessie.  After all, he has been paying calls on Virginia for quite some time, if you follow.  Emmett fully understands this fact, but he doesn’t care.  As he pursues Jessie, his mother slowly begins to breakdown mentally.  She convinces herself she is pregnant (causing no end of embarrassment for Tipton) and contemplates some rash criminal acts.  Still, she is cool enough to give Emmett’s courtship of Jessie her blessings.

Evidently, in the previous cut much of this was presented as farcical comedy.  Black certainly succeeded in draining all the ostensive humor out of the film, which sounds like it is just as well.  While the dreary tone might be more consistent, huge problems remain.  The gauzy, nostalgic cinematography (and to a certain extent the costumes) give the film a 1950’s-early 1960’s vibe, but the cars and set trappings are clearly of a later vintage.  It is also hard to figure out where this could all take place.  From what the audience is told, this is a small town in the Deep South, politically and socially dominated by Mormons, within easy driving distance of Atlantic City.  Okay, find that on the map for us.

This is not just a matter of splitting pedantic hairs.  Penned by Black, the ex-Mormon Big Love scribe, Virginia’s screenplay is far too concerned with schooling people the director disagrees with, such as his former co-religionists, southerners, and Republicans (presumably), than telling a coherent story.  Nor is there much character development here, but rather a reliance on stereotypes.  Tipton is a conservative Mormon, therefore he is a hypocrite.  Virginia is a “free spirit,” so she must be saintly. 

Indeed, Tipton’s kinky laundry is predictably and repeatedly aired in public, lest we miss the point.  What can be said of a narrative that hinges on the realization Sheriff Tipton allowed a reality TV show to film him walking from a crime scene to the town’s fallen woman next door for a bit of action on the side?  The purpose of this review is hardly to give cheaters tips to prevent detection, but duh.

Jennifer Connelly is quite compelling as Virginia, but she portrays the title character as such a lost little girl in a state of perpetually arrested development, it adds layer of creepiness to the lurid sexual content.  Conversely, Ed Harris is nothing more than a caricature as Tipton.

It is really heavy to think this is the new and improved Virginia.  Those poor misfortunate souls in Toronto must have taken quite a hit for the team.  It is still pretty bad.  Not recommended for anyone, Virginia opens today (5/18) in New York at the AMC Empire.

Article VI

Article VI: Faith, Politics, America
Written and directed by Bryan Hall

“The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”—Article VI of the U.S. Constitution.

Gov. Mitt Romney is a Mormon, and the media will not let you forget. Evidently, for some people this is a deal-breaker. That media reaction became the spark for Mormon filmmaker Bryan Hall’s new documentary Article VI, which examines the practice of religious tests in the political process, imposed both officially by governments and unofficially by individuals, with admirable nuance and perspective.

Article uses presidential candidate John F. Kennedy’s Houston “Catholic issue” speech as a touchstone throughout the film, as opposition to Kennedy’s Catholicism parallels the opposition to Romney for his Mormon faith. However, Article also addresses both recent and historic American religious political controversies, spotlighting the early violent treatment of Mormons in America.

It may well be that many of the filmmakers are political conservatives and Romney supporters, as is definitely the case with executive producer and on-screen commentator Hugh Hewitt, but the film is consistently restrained and balanced. It is not afraid to criticize intolerant “Christian” expression, certainly including the mob protesting the Mormon Church’s annual conference, but also Judge Roy Moore’s Ten Commandments monument, and the so-called Christians who disgracefully disrupted the first Hindu benediction in the U.S. Senate. Article benefits from some telling commentary, as when Christian rights attorney David French implies Judge Moore made his work more difficult:

“The very weekend that Judge Moore was making his stand in Alabama, I was in a Federal court in Pennsylvania arguing for the free speech rights of some Christian students in the Pennsylvania higher education system, and it struck me as supremely ironic that the very moment I was seeking the aid of the Federal court to protect Christian rights, a few hundred miles down the road another Christian was defying the Federal courts. And I was just hoping the judge was able to separate the two and to realize that, yes, some of us do have respect for the law.”

William F. Buckley famously ran the Birchers out mainstream conservativism, making it clear there was no place for paranoid lunacy in the movement. Often, it seems a similar impulse is at work in Article, in an effort to sever mainstream religious conservatives from the strident fringe elements which insist on identifying themselves as Christian.

Filmmaker Hall though, has a surprise in store for his third act. He reaches out to one of the frightening protestors outside the Mormon conference, and makes a human connection. While interview subjects like Rev. Flip Benham of Operation Rescue and internet evangelist Bill Keller say some pretty unattractive things, Hall gives them an opportunity to show some humanity, which they do, even displaying a sense of humor. Only Pastor Robert Jeffress fails to take advantage of the opportunity, sounding downright Clintonian when asked if he could consider Hall a friend or neighbor.

Article is the second documentary in recent months to address Mormonism. However, Alex LeMay’s Desert Bayou essentially lines up with the protestors outside the Mormon Conference, including an uncomfortably hostile litany of perceived Mormon sins halfway through the film. LeMay sets out to demonize those he disagrees with, whereas Hall looks to humanize them. That speaks volumes about the difference between the two filmmakers’ approaches.

Throughout Article, Hall proves to be a talented filmmaker, who is scrupulously fair in his treatment of both interview subjects and the issues examined. Article appears to have a theatrical release in the offing. If it screens near you, it is not exactly the film you might expect, but well worth seeing.

Opening Next Week: Desert Bayou

There is an impending bumper crop of Katrina related documentaries in the works. Four had screenings at this year’s IFP marketplace (the most promising I saw was Talkin’ Water). Inevitably that raises the stakes for each film to distinguish itself from the pack. Desert Bayou (trailer here), Alex LeMay’s documentary about a group of Katrina evacuees finding shelter in the unlikely environment of Utah, has interesting moments, but falls short of its ambitions.

Bayou follows a group of NOLA residents, focusing on two particular men who we learn as the film progresses, brought their personal demons with them, compounding the difficulties they face in Katrina’s wake. Right from the start, Bayou wants to frame the story in divisive racial terms: evacuees vs. Utah. The filmmakers are right to decry mistreatment during the evacuation. Surely the New Orleanians should have been told where they were going when they were whisked onto the plane to Salt Lake City. Outrageously, adding indignity to their injuries, they were frisked for contraband as they disembarked from the plane.

However, there is much made of the fact that they were initially housed at the National Guard’s Camp Williams instead of a downtown hotel, offered to imply racism on the part of the people of Utah. Though no holiday to be sure, this complaint seems to be a bit of a stretch. Those displaced by Hurricanes are usually temporarily housed in Red Cross or Salvation Army shelters. The permanent facilities of Camp Williams may have actually been better accommodations than those shelters. Military bases were also designated as shelters in Texas during Hurricane Rita, so the experience was not unique to the Utah evacuees.

One of the intriguing aspects of the film that went under-developed was the relationship between the evacuees and the base commander, Col. Scot Olsen. He seems to be a stereotypical hardnosed military man, whose on-camera explanation of the curfew he established makes no sense whatsoever. However, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who is often highly critical of the handling of the NOLA residents, seems to be quite sincere when he compliments the Colonel for the rapport he developed with his guests. Understanding those relationships better would have helped put the entire Camp Williams interlude into clearer focus.

Too often the film seems to be more interested in scoring cheap points against Utah in general and Mormons in particular. It seems clear that a handful of man-on-the-street interviews were cherry-picked towards this end. Most problematic is the inclusion of a late middle-age woman whose mental grasp of the situation appears questionable. Her statements can hardly be considered indicative of anyone beyond herself, and her inclusion comes off as exploitative.

Bayou recounts the admittedly embarrassing history of the Mormon Church on racial equality. Again though, it overstates things a tad, labeling Joseph Smith an anti-Abolitionist, when, for what it’s worth, his views evidently evolved to Abolitionism. Bayou also makes much of what the narrator calls the “unorthodox doctrines” of the LDS, but again seems to overstate things when belittling their belief in “continuing revelation” through Church prophets, which does not sound so far removed from Catholic belief in Papal Infallibility (and of course, the Catholic Church has a strong presence New Orleans).

There are some moving scenes with the two primary evacuees profiled, that illustrate the impact the past continues to have on the present. One struggles to overcome his history as an ex-con. The other grapples with drug addiction. Both decide to try to build a new life for their families in Utah, evidently with varying degrees of success. It seems the film grudgingly concedes that maybe the people of Utah are not so bad after all, as 100 of the 600 evacuees decide to put down permanent roots there.

Ultimately, there are too many talking heads in Bayou, and not enough dramatic payoffs with its central characters. It makes some very legitimate complaints, but undermines its integrity as a documentary with its heavy-handed biases. Considering how extensive the Katrina filmography will be, Bayou just seems a little slight, like a padded episode of Frontline, but for those who follow events in New Orleans closely, it opens here in New York at the Village East next Friday (10/5).