Customer Reviews

September Dawn

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

Been waiting for this DVD to come out since first seeing it in the theatres- and having since read several histories about the historical event. There already have been numerous website slugfests about just how accurate the movie is, with most of the debate just re-emphasizing how, 150 years later, the Mormon community still struggles to reconcile this documented part of their church history.
But before the DVD is even released, and before the anticipated subsequent storm of prejudiced-laced customer "reviews" ( and it doesn't even matter which side they are for), let me just say that the "editorial review" summary ought to at least introduce the topic fairly. For one, it is hardly an issue of uncertainty whether or not Mormons participated in the massacre- indeed, the valid histories (even the source work by Juanita Brooks, herself a devout Mormon)all confirm that Mormons did most of the killing, and even eventually owned-up to that, but only after years of trying to pawn it off on the Paiute Indians. I've seen the movie and read the histories, and the only aspect of the movie which is somewhat "over-the-top" is its clear portrayal of Brigham Young as a main architect of the massacre; the available histories at least conclude that there is some doubt as to his actual role. Whether viewers of the movie liked the love story subplot or not isn't really what this movie is about, after all....it's just a cinematic technique used to make the history more personal (much like Cameron did with "Titanic", and Kate Winslett and Leonard DiCaprio).
But having said that, I'm sure the DVD release of this movie will again spark all the prejudicial comments about Mormons, etc.....but none of that changes the facts, and the movie does a fair job with that. But don't believe me- don't believe ANY reviewer: read the published histories, then you decide.

Surprised to see this film currently has a rating of 4.5 stars. I guess Mormon advocates haven't realized this item is up and open for comments. Glad I can get mine in before the comment wars begin. I liked the movie overall. As a professor of religion I know the story accords with historical facts of the Mountain Meadows massacre as well as we know them. It truly does show how human beings can do the most atrocious things to one another if they believe they receive the blessing of God in doing so. I would only wish they ask some basic epistemological questions about the justification of their claim to knowledge that it is God they are truly hearing. The film mentions possible motives like the belief the federal government was about to start a war against the Mormons and payback for the murder of Joseph Smith in Missouri. One explanation for the massacre the film does not address but needs to be explored is using religious justification for plain old greed. There was a lot of wealth, cattle and horses with that wagon train. The Paiutes didn't get it. Who did? The film nicely points out how John Lee is the only Mormon forced to suffer penalty for the event. As for the film itself, it is beautifully filmed. I thought the Davidovich character was shallow, and her death is left unexplained. The real clinker in the film, though, and the reason I reduce its rating to a three star, is the clumsily melodramatic love affair between the son of the Mormon Bishop and the daughter of the wagon train's minister. As part of that story you have the son being imprisoned by the Bishop by being chained at the ankle in a barn. The chain, though, is around his boot. Why doesn't the kid just remove his foot from the boot? That's the kind of silliness that creeps in when you import melodrama into this tragic story. My greatest concern: The Mormons (with the exception of the lovestruck son of the Bishop) were uniformly caricatured as the embodiment of hate, while those on the wagon train were uniformly portrayed as the embodiment of sweetness and light. That's too simple-minded an approach. There are other comments to be made, but I don't want to turn this into a lecture on religion. Good film, but not great by any stretch.

This is a great movie. In an age of extreme political correctness, here comes a movie that dares to look at a fully home grown 19th century massacre (on September 11, no less) in the name of a paranoid religion.

I'm sure there will be an organized group of critics (Mormons?) who will post their one star reviews. Don't be duped. This movie may be a scathing look at a shameful incident in the history of Mormonism -- the so-called "mountain meadows massacre" -- but the real theme of this film is something much greater.

World events suggest there is coming a time when we will be forced to face in a public way the problem of irrational religions based on lies and fear and hate. What if the unthinkable happens and the West wages an all out war against a religion hell-bent on cleansing the planet of "infidels." Whose God will win? Or is that the wrong question?

Under what circumstances can we have this urgent conversation? A start is by going to see this movie and talking about what it means to Americans today. How do we deal with the conflicting issues of freedom and security? Especially freedom of religion?

Is there a subjective way to even talk about a religion being "authentic"? Is there a way to "love our enemies" or should we kill them before they kill us? This unexpected and unsettling movie about a Holy War on a small scale deserves consideration and conversation on a large scale.

The makers of September Dawn did not have a big budget, and are not contending for Oscars - they only wanted to tell a story from American history that most people never heard - the Mountain Meadows Massacre. 140 members of a wagon train, passing through Utah in 1857 - men, women and children - were murdered in cold blood by the Church of Jesus H. Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Mormons, under the direction of church president and territorial governor Brigham Young.

Two veteran actors turn in worthy performances - Jon Voight is righteously authoritarian as the Cedar City bishop, and Terence Stamp is an imposing Brigham Young. Unfortunately, the screenwriting is weak, especially the dialogue in the opening scenes, but the narrative of events is what counts, and the filmmakers took great care to be historically accurate. The fictional romance is simply the vehicle to tell the story from both points of view.

The bishop's son is developing his own identity as a young man, questioning his father's ideas, and potentially serving as a peace broker, while he courts a young woman in the wagon train. Like any rational person would, he begins to see the "immigrant" party as a means for his own escape from his father's cult.

The irony that this savage mass murder occurred on September 11 is not lost - at one point the Mormon prophet is quoted saying "I will be the new Muhammad" and the church leaders openly rationalize how they are doing "gentiles" a favor by killing them so they can be redeemed by Jesus.

The film also provides insight into the fear and hatred that the Mormon leaders felt towards these "immigrants" - they came from Missouri, where a Mormon leader was killed earlier that year. They regarded Utah as their own Promised Land, and feared President James Buchanan was preparing to send the US Army to depose Brigham Young as territorial governor. So the film explains the motive for the massacre without justifying it.

The ending is shocking, even if you know the story, and the message is how ruthless people can be when motivated by religious fanaticism, whether on 9/11/1857 or 9/11/2001.

The Mormon Church has undertaken a smear campaign against this film, accusing the producers of trying to undermine their presidential candidate. The church disputes the level of involvement by Brigham Young as portrayed in the film, but they do not dispute the fact that the massacre occurred and was conducted by Mormons.

This film tells an important part of the history of "how it was moving west." It is well worth your time.

An interesting event, but not particularly well told. While this is "inspired" by a historical event, as the film itself proclaims at the beginning, the overly sharp contrast in the film between the "Gentiles" in the doomed wagon train and the Mormons seems overdrawn to the point of propaganda. The Mormons or at least the church leadership are essentially evil while the wagon train folks, gather a lot at the river, sing a lot of hymns and do their best to just get along with one and all, sort of Little Wagon Train on the Prairie, before being literally led as lambs to the slaughter. It just gets to be more than a bit too much after a while. I don't know if Lolita Davidovich's liberated pistol packing Western Woman in Pants in particular is based on any historical personage or not, but she seems more like a device to contrast with the Mormons and give them something more to dislike about the immigrants. Terrance Stamp as Brigham Young is interesting to watch, but most of the acting, along with the script and direction is more on a TV movie of the week level.

One several levels, this movie is very good. Visually it is excellent. The acting is also quite good. However, as can be expected, the story line which is based on true events, has been polarized and sensationalized. The story of the massacre would be far more interesting (not to mention accurate) if the film makers used more history to complicate the story and they did silencing certain historical factors in an effort to see the story in black and white.

It is difficult to "explain" the reasons for the massacre without coming off as trying to "excuse" the massacre. Nevertheless it is possible to do just that (explain without excusing) and this is what I was hoping the movie would do especially since the Mormon church does not try to make excuses for the event (rather they accept the fact that some members acted wrongfully and have publically apologized without equivocation) something about which the movie misleads views (at the end of the film).

Of course it goes without saying that the love story and many of the characters had to be created in order to make the movie. However, there are some problems with the movie. The people in the wagon train are depicted in the most glowing terms while the Mormons are depicted as completely fanatical. Are viewers really supposed to believe that every person in the wagon train was so friendly and innocent that I sometimes looked for halos over their heads? And as for the Mormons...was every one of them so brainwashed as to participate in a massacre simply because a leader told them so? Things were more complicated than that.
As is often the case, the Mormons are made to look like untrustworthy, fanatical, non-Christians who were extreme in their judgments against "gentiles." The movie makers took too much creative liberty when they depicted Mormon women being taken and executed by the church's Apostles. Moreover, the juxtaposition of the Pastor's prayer and the Bishop's "prayer (curse, actually)" was shameful.

The movie was quick to show a depiction of Joseph Smith ordering the destruction of an anti-Mormon printing press (and act which while disturbing was not technically illegal given Nauvoo's particular city charter from the state of Illinois), but they did not depict the illegal destruction of a Mormon press that occurred some years earlier. The unsettling nature of the Danites' activates (also grossly embellished) was featured but not one single scene was included that depicted the years of persecution Mormons experienced in Ohio, Illinois and Missouri. The movie mentions the Mormon's hatred towards Missouri, but it is strange that this "historical" film does not mention that this state officially decreed an "extermination order" wherein any and all Mormons could be (and were) driven from the state like vermin. Because of this infamous order, a Missourian could (and did) kill a Mormon (even women and children) and not have charges brought against him. Haun's Mill Massacre (where it was the Mormons who were deceived and massacred by non-Mormons) was not mentioned in the film either.

The film tried to make the fear of Federal Army troops marching on Utah to be an overreaction on the part of the Mormons when in fact it was a very real threat and given governments' history of abusing Mormons this threat almost certainly played a major part in the historical equation.
Finally, the idea that Brigham Young ordered the Mountain Meadows Massacre is not a fact at all.

But in the end, an egregious crime was committed by people who were Mormons. The movie is important for bringing to light this often overlooked and tragic event. I simply feel that the whole incident is much more interesting that the film portrayed it because the movie-makers seemed more interested in black and white depictions and sensationalism rather than complicating the situation.
One of the most interesting parts (which is mentioned, but glossed over with a sentence or two run across the screen at the end of the film) is that John D. Lee alone was scape-goated for the crime which had many many participants.

The movie is well worth watching but also well worth re-making!

I have watched this movie twice now so that I am ready for a review. I decided that since this movie is based on an actual historical event, I should review it both on the level of entertainment/story telling as well as historical accuracy.

ENTERTAINMENT VALUE:

This is the area where I give the movie its lowest review. Basically, this movie sucked! The love story (which is obviously used to develop the bridge between the Mormons and the wagon train) felt very forced and lacked that chemistry to make it believable. Basically, it felt like the love story was there for the sake of there being a love story. Jon Voight's character was beyond ridiculous. In Jon Voight's attempts to come off as a religious fanatic, he feels more like an insane man who makes schizophrenics seem normal. People who commit violence in the name of their religion are very angry people, but Voight just seems to be a mixture of a drug addict combined with a helping of the local village idiot. The movie seems to love painting this black and white picture of the wagon train people of being these warm loving, good Christian folk and the Mormons as being blood thirsty and demonically possessed society. In short, the characters lack dimension and credibility and the love story could have been done much better, by someone else.

HISTORICAL VALUE:

While most movies take historical licenses to make a movie entertaining, and this movie is no exception, it did do a much better job at portraying history than most historical narratives. Granted, the wagon train did not spend a week near Ceder Falls before the first attack, but the attacks and the final massacre were accurately portrayed. The sermons given by Brigham Young (Terrance Stamp) were word for word exact with the real sermons given prior to Mountain Meadows Massacre. Granted, Brigham Young did not have a British accent and Mormons were not actually killing each other to atone for their sins (probably added that to project Mormons as blood-thirsty demonic people), but there really was a tension between Mormons and outsiders and their was a growing amount of fear and resentment to the US Government. Mormons were really making an oath at this time to avenge the blood of Joseph Smith when the opportunity presented itself, giving the conditions necessary to start something as tragic as Mountain Meadows Massacre.

This movie was a history lesson for me, as I do not remember ever hearing about this in school. It is a jawdropping sort of movie and you wonder how this could have possibly happened.

Great movie. Though now that I live in Salt Lake City - it took me a while before I heard of it. I hope that it is getting more press/exposure outside of Utah. Important movie that should be seen.

History is best told by the victors. History can also be re-written and re-imagined,. depending upon the bias and intentions of the writers. Such is the case with "September Dawn".

The Christopher Cain film tells the story of the Mountain Meadows Mormon Massacre of September 11, 1857 filling in the events of what could have happened during those fateful days of September.

With a fanatical edict, Brigham Young, ordered the strict observation of discouraging emigation through the Mormon controlled area of Utah a decade after their escape from persecution. Setting the stage for a conflict with the United states government, the moderate arm of the Church lost control to the fanatical element. Historical documents tell the story as one of lost communications between Young and the local Mormon Bishop Jacob Samuelson, while survivors tell a different version.

The film stars Jon Voight as Jacob Samuelson, Terrence Stamp as Brigham Young, Trent Ford as Jonathan Samuelson, and Tamara Hope as Emily, the love interest to Jonathan. This presentation is a passionate look at the much disputed massacre that casts a dark shadow on the Mormons of the mid 1800's.

Filmed in Alberta, "September Dawn", is a sweeping cinematic production that tries for the middle ground almost successfully. Injecting romance into the politically, religious struggle softens the film, yet its' inclusion makes the massacre more violent and senseless. Perhaps that is the true intent of the tale? In an entertainment environment inhabited by films more grandiose every year, subtle films packed with intelligent commentary are often lost in the mix. The intellectual debate over this event, especially at the 150th anniversary, has been rekindled.

Will history ever resolve what happened those two weeks as the wagon train rested? The point is moot almost as the consequences of the massacre still resonate in the church and throughout history. The DVD includes two special features to balance the facts and fiction.

This may not be the `truth', but if it is not, it is entertaining and presents a stark look at a dark moment in Mormon History. For the courage to present such a moment in time, Christopher Cain should be applauded.

Ladies and gentlemen of the academy...

Tim Lasiuta

www.septemberdawn.net and www.www.SonyPictures.com