through my membership in the philadelphia film society i saw a preview of september dawn last night. "september dawn" tells the story of the mountain meadows massacre, or at least a version of the story.
the massacre is a potentially juicy topic for a film. in 1857 a wagon train stopped on its way to california in the mormon-controlled utah territory. the mormons who were in charge had built a fundamentalist colony that was highly suspicious of outsiders. meanwhile, relations between the utah colony and u.s. government had soured and were about to develop into what was later called the utah war.
what happened to the wagon train is pretty clear. they were massacred by members of a mormon militia and some allied native american tribes. the only survivors were small children who were spared because of their age who were handed over to good mormon families to raise. the controversy is not over the kills as much as who ordered the massacre; i.e. how high up in the mormon hierarchy it went. whether brigham young himself ordered or knew of the killings is not clear. what is clear is that he did later try to cover up church involvement.
so the film had a lot of material to work with. religious fundamentalism leading to cold-hearted sectarian massacres unfortunately has a lot of resonance these days. on top of that, the massacre happened to take place on september 11th.
on the other hand, it is quite difficult to make a film that directly implicates the doctrines of an existing religion without crossing the line into simple bigotry. unfortunately, i think "september dawn" did end up crossing the line. all 150 members of the wagon train are portrayed as good (non-mormon) christians. early in the film the camera cuts back and forth between a religious ceremony on the wagon train and in the mormon community. while the wagon trainers are all about love and forgiveness, the mormons are shown only condemning the outsiders as "abominations." clearly we are supposed to think there is a good religion and a bad religion, and there is no question at all which religion is supposed to be bad.
on top of that, the wagon trainers seemingly had no personality flaws at all. they are generous--they give the son of the mormon bishop their best horse as a gift. they are also exceedingly tolerant. one member of the wagon train is a woman who dresses like a man and carries a rifle. while the mormons call her an "abomination", the protestants don't understand what all the fuss is about. "it's a free country" one says to a puzzled mormon, a remark that struck me as completely anachronistic. on top of that, none of the wagon trainers display even the slightest bias against the church of latter day saints despite the fact that the film takes place at perhaps the high point of anti-mormon sentiment in this country.
in short, the members of the wagon train party have the sensibilities of early 21st century americans. and that's in sharp contrast to the fundamentalists mormons. by the end the film comes across as little more than an anti-mormon hit piece. already some are wondering whether the film will hurt the romney campaign. luckily for romney, i expect few people will end up seeing "september dawn."
