The Work and the Glory (Part 1—with Part 2 and Part 3 soon to follow) is based on the nine part series of the same name by Gerald Lund. As with many book-to-movie translations, fans of the book will *probably* like the movie, although I suspect it’s not going to attract a lot of new converts to the series.
Unlike some of the other popular Mormon literary works of which I remain willfully ignorant (see: Charly), I happen to have read the Work & Glory series (at least through Book 5) and, for better or worse, provided much of my early knowledge of Church history.
Now, thirteen years later, we have the first movie in the series which provides a very faithful adaptation of the first W&G book: Pillar of Light. I didn’t review the book again before my screening of the movie, but to my recollection the movie follows the events in the book very closely, without changing or adding anything of significance.
As with other literary adaptations, having such a close relationship to the source material makes analyzing the movie hard to do without analyzing the book at the same time. “Pillar of Light” — the book — is serviceable as historical fiction, but doesn’t excel in any one particular area. It was also clearly written to be the first part of the series, and — following suit — the movie adaptation does not seem like a self-contained entity either. It’s more like the two-hour pilot of an ongoing TV series — albeit a well-produced one — where you ‘tune in next week for more adventures of the Steed family’. (Some of the elements of the novels are a little “soap-opera-ish” and might be better suited to a smaller scale TV mini-series. The likelihood that they’re really going to get through nine movies with theatrical releases seems fairly small…)
This leads to a quandary: if the book is at best a B to B+ quality work, and the movie never strays far from the content of the book, then the upper limit of what the movie can achieve is almost set in stone from the beginning. W&G the movie has great production values, and a decent, solid cast…yet in the same way doesn’t really excel either as a romance, a character study, or an insightful look at the beginning of Mormonism. On the other hand, though, it accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do — recreate the events of the book effectively and get the W&G series started on the right foot. Is it better to be a mediocre success than an ambitious failure?
Perhaps one of the problems — again, shared with the books — is that the really interesting people of the period — Joseph and Emma Smith, and the other historical Saints — are only supporting characters. The Steeds are always front and center in the action, and they just aren’t as compelling. A movie focused entirely on the Smith family and their trials through the early days of the Church would, I think, be a really fascinating movie — but, of course, that movie then wouldn’t be The Work and the Glory, would it?
The Work and the Glory is what it is: a decent period piece with romantic and historical elements, but its close ties to the source material limit its emotional impact and insights into the roots of Mormonism. It’s not a great movie, yet (one casting decision aside) it’s hard to think of any obvious way they could have made it better. It might serve well as an introduction for non-members to some of the fundamental principles of Mormonism, or as a introduction to Church history for members — yet will probably never rise to the status of “Mormon classic”.
Final Grade: B
Analysis and Other Comments (possible spoilers):
(1) Notice how Joshua’s beard gets bigger the more rebellious and ‘wicked’ he becomes? Yeah, that’s subtle. (I’m not alone in noticing this: check out this comprehensive analysis by Eric Thompson at A Motley Vision about how beard size is directly proportional to righteousness in all three Work & Glory movies).
(2) The majority of the historical characters and fictional characters were cast and portrayed effectively by a solid group of veteran TV and movie actors, especially Benjamin Steed and Joseph Smith. The one weak link, in my opinion, is Lydia McBride, played by Tiffany Dupont. She’s pretty (in a generic way) and not a terrible actress by any means but, boy, her Lydia has absolutely no screen presence at all. There’s nothing about her that would inspire a guy to want to spend more than five minutes in her presence, let alone two guys coming to blows over her. Frankly, if I were Nathan, I wouldn’t have thought twice about whether to leave her in favor of Joseph Smith and the restored church. Maybe not even after she converted…
Again, it’s not necessarily an acting problem per se, but for whatever reason her Lydia has no charisma, no passion, nothing in her personality that demands – as the book Lydia did — that guys pay attention to her. Since the majority of the movie (including the ending) is centered upon Lydia’s relationship with Nathan and Joshua, her blandness serves as W&G one major flaw. As it happens, the part of Lydia has already been re-cast for Parts 2 and 3 (probably for the better). (Tiffany Dupont gives a better performance — albeit only slightly — in “One Night With The King”, based on the Old Testament book of Esther.)
(3) The movie — and the book, too — has Joseph Smith telling the story of the First Vision to Nathan Steed using the exact words from the current scriptural version in Joseph Smith: History. A little distracting, as it’s fairly well known that the official version now in the LDS canon wasn’t written until many years after the time period portrayed in the movie. Joseph would have certainly used different words talking to someone in this time period, although for the average LDS movie-goer, it would probably have been more distracting not to use the words from the Pearl of Great Price that everyone in modern times knows by heart. Pick your poison, I guess.
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