Review: Brigham City (B)

Brigham City is the second movie from writer, actor, director Richard Dutcher and the follow up to Dutcher’s excellent and challenging first film (God’s Army). Rather than play it safe with his sophomore film, Dutcher has responded with an even darker, more ambitious film — an admirable attempt, even if the end result ends up being a slightly lesser movie than his first.

Many LDS films present a highly idealized view of life within church membership; however, both of Dutcher’s movies have been willing to delve into “edgy” material — showing some of the darker aspects of humanity, even (and especially) within members of the Church.

God’s Army — which never went beyond missionaries playing practical jokes and reading anti-Mormon literature — developed a reputation for being more “edgy” than it actually was.  If anything, Brigham City should put God’s Army in its proper perspective, as it involves murder, rape, pornography, and the real prospect that a church member is a serial killer.  Everyone knows that Church members can and will commit any sin that non-members do (including murder), even if few like to talk about it.  Dutcher deserves credit for addressing this somewhat ‘taboo’ subject directly.

The story centers around a small town sheriff (played by Dutcher himself) who doubles as the local LDS bishop.  He and his deputy are confronted with a series of killings in their small town — an understandable shock to the residents given the small town atmosphere they are accustomed to.  The sheriff knows the people in his town — both through his job and church calling — which means he almost certainly knows the killer personally.   How to find the killer, then, when it could be your next door neighbor, or the person who sits in front of you in church?   Why would the Lord allow serial killers to torment the (supposedly) righteous members of His church in a small town, anyway?

The acting, like in God’s Army, is generally good (in fact, has most of the same people), and the dialogue is above average.  Often clever, as a seemingly innocuous conversation early in the movie is shown to have deeper meaning near the end.  Dutcher raises some serious questions about religion and morality which the movie doesn’t quite get around to answering as fully as it could have, but it deserves credit for even raising the issues in the first place.

Brigham City’s biggest flaw is the use of too much screen time in ‘red herrings’ — scenes that are meant to suggest who the serial killer could be, but which turn out to be false when the killer is revealed at the end. The technique is overused, and destroys any potential the movie had for repeat viewings. ‘Red herring’ scenes may be effective the first time you see the movie, but will be tedious to sit through a second time when you already know who the killer is. In contrast to truly classic movies which reward repeat viewings, I can’t see how anyone would want to see Brigham City more than once.

The worst part is, I wish those scenes had been cut in lieu of more discussion of the religious and moral elements of murder and free agency.  There are a lot of deep ideas here and some of them are only briefly explored. Brigham City is a good film, but I left with the feeling Dutcher missed some easy opportunities to make the movie truly powerful.

Overall, though, Brigham City shows Richard Dutcher as an ambitious and talented filmmaker — almost certainly the best the LDS cinema genre has to offer — and, provided the somewhat dark material (for a Church movie) doesn’t scare you off, it is well worth a viewing.

Final Grade: B

Analysis and Other Comments (possible spoilers):

(1) Brigham City is a Church movie…it is also PG-13.  It earns its higher rating being, of course, about a serial killer and a host of grisly murders.  Even though the actual blood and violence content is commendably restrained given the subject matter, parents should think twice before letting young kids see it.

For adults and mature kids, though, there really isn’t anything ‘objectionable’ to be concerned about; there’s no sex or profanity, and even the violent aspects are well below what you’d see on a CSI/Law & Order-style show on TV.

Brigham City is one of the prime examples of why the PG-13 rating is inherently different than the R rating.   Often, people will claim it’s just a matter of degrees, but that’s not true in all cases.  R ratings are given because of ‘R-rated’ levels of profanity, violence, or sexual material — the standard PSV categories, with an occassional nod to drug use.  PG-13 ratings, on the other hand, are NOT just based on profanity/violence/sexual content levels (although often are, of course).

A movie about a serial killer — or that contains a dead body or other “adult situations” — no matter how little violence is actually on-screen, is fundamentally not a movie for kids and will receive the PG-13 rating from the MPAA.  And that’s correct:  you wouldn’t show this movie to a 6 year old, obviously;  however, there’s really nothing ‘offensive’ in it, nothing for which you’d be ashamed if (as the cliché goes) the prophet came over to your house and found you watching it.

(2) One of the key characters in Brigham City is a female FBI agent who starts working with the local authorities in the small town after the murders start. She’s not LDS, but through the process of investigating the people in the town, she starts learning about church principles.

Having her character be non-LDS is an effective way to for Dutcher to introduce and discuss religious issues within the context of the events of the movie without making it sound redundant (coming from the mouths of long-time Church members).  It’s a good idea — but not explored as careful as it could have been given the screentime allotted to it.  Brigham City hints at the key question “why would God allow murders to happen, especially to ‘righteous’ people.”, and it would be natural for the non-LDS detective to ask some pointed questions about it, with the sheriff/bishop forced to provide an answer.

The “red herring” scenes discussed earlier steal away screen time from these types of conversations, but even as written the sheriff and the FBI agent share a brief conversation on a porch in the middle of the movie where the actual topic of conversation is inconsequential, but could have been better served by talking about something directly related to the movie’s theme.

It would have been a natural question from an admitted non-religious person to a religious person: “So…why does God allow good people to be murdered?” and the sheriff could have given her a simple explanation.   As mentioned above, Dutcher deserves credit for even raising the question, but wastes too much time with meaningless conversations and the aforementioned red herring scenes which could have been used to discuss this question more deeply.

Why does God allow good people to be killed by bad people? “Free agency” is the simplest answer.  It doesn’t take long of a thought experiment to deduce that partial agency — God should prevent murders, for example, but leave mankind alone to make their own decisions in all other contexts — isn’t workable.  If God prevents people from murdering others, should he also prevent rapes, non-fatal assaults, and physical abuse?  What about emotional abuse?  Should God prevent abortions?  Or someone driving drunk and leading to deaths of innocents?  Taking the position that God should prevent the “really bad” stuff, while allowing the “not so bad” stuff runs into a philosophical wall almost immediately.  Given that, according to the scriptures, an entire war was fought in heaven over the right to choose, causing the loss of many of Heavenly Father’s innumerable children, so how important does the principle seem to be?

Henry Ford had a famous saying, “You can have any color Ford you want…as long as it’s black.” If God said you were free to make any choice you wanted…as long as it was choices A, B, or C, with choices D, E, F, G and H off limits, are you really free? Everyone must have the option to do evil, or else doing good will have no meaning. How could anyone learn and appreciate the value of life unless the taking of life was possible?

(3) Another concept introduced in Brigham City but not explored as fully as it could have been:  In the last third of the movie, the sheriff calls everyone in town together and sends them out two by two to search all the homes in the area. This, of course, is blatantly illegal and a gross violation of the residents’ civil rights. The sheriff justifies it by saying he’s trying to save the life of a kidnapped girl, despite the fact that there’s absolutely nothing in the killer’s MO in the previous murders that suggests he keeps the victims alive for any significant length of time.  (And, obviously, the search fails…)

This is in a sense a fascinating sequence because it is so illegal, showing what lengths even good people go to in order to achieve their ostensibly worthy goals in an ‘ends justifying the means’ way. I would have liked the screenplay to expand on this concept further, showing what ramifications came from such violation of people’s rights. Even in a small town, surely there would have been complaints and an inquiry from the state government — even a lawsuit.

Making things worse was the fact that the sheriff was also the bishop of the local ward. Another key issue presented by the movie was the inherent conflict of having a dual role in the community — having a job and having a church calling where you have to interface with people wearing two distinct hats. How do those two particular hats collide and conflict?  Imagine how the guy with the pornography stash in his closet feels when his bishop (acting as sheriff) illegally searches his house and discovers it. Wouldn’t you imagine that would create an odd atmosphere the next time he had a bishop’s interview? Wouldn’t his actions as sheriff hurt (if not destroy outright) his ability as bishop to help this brother through the process of repentance?  Again, Brigham City deserves praise for containing some deep, discussion-worthy content (most movies don’t bother) even if the discussion is incomplete.

(4) For all the talk in the beginning about Church members committing any sin that non-members can, I don’t know if it’s clear that the killer WAS Mormon.  We learn that he stole the identity of a Church member in order to start his new life, but not whether he himself was LDS beforehand.

I don’t remember anything conclusive one way or the other in Brigham City, but I would say the context of the movie leans towards him having to be Mormon for two reasons:  (1) It would be difficult for a non-member to suddenly usurp a LDS man’s identity and convincingly pass himself off as a Church member immediately, especially having an active, LDS wife.  And (2), it would have been too much of a cop-out to introduce the theme of evil within Church members and then have the true villain end up being a non-member.  Other LDS filmmakers may possibly have been tempted to resolve things in that manner, but I doubt Dutcher would have accepted this.