In anticipation of the light to nonexistent blogging I’ll be doing next week, here is yet another long over due post. And it also has to do with that other September 11th.

My review of September Dawn:

The Mountain Meadow Massacre happened on September 11, 1857. Since 9-11-01, there have been many comparisons between the two tragedies. If you want to read about the Massacre, please go here, here or just go to google and put the term in.

So the big drama is over whether the LDS church was responsible, and in turn Brigham Young, for what occurred or not. The LDS church maintains Young was NOT involved but rather evasively state that the Massacre was a blot on the regions history. Read full statement here.

Its just not the 150th anniversary of this event that is stirring up media but so is the film, September Dawn, starring John Voight. The film places the blame squarely on the shoulders of Young and the Mormons.

Let me get this out of the way, the film is pretty much lame. There is no real character development, shotty acting and dialogue, a cutesy romance story thrown in for the ladies(?) and bunch of historical inaccuracies. When the film opens, we meet the nice traveling wagons of immigrants from Arkansas and Missouri. They’re good Christians even though they support gambling. In come the scary Mormons in their dark clothing and on their inadequate horses. Our protagonist, Jonathan, is the son of a fictional LDS leader. Jonathan falls in love with one of the traveling women and vows to abandon his religion for her and join her on her trip West.

Umm what! OK, first of all, if Jonathan is a true Mormon believer, he believes that he has to marry another Mormon (and a few more) to get into Heaven. I felt like the dialogue could have been straight of the 21st century show Big Love, not the 19th century. Sure, Jonathan is doubting his religion but it would have been more believable if his lady love decided to become a Mormon, abandoned her family and then real drama ensues. But thats just me.

The biggest problem I had was when Jonathan starts yelling at his father and fellow Mormons that Utah is in the United States. Now if anyone did their homework, they would have realized that the Mormons fled to Utah to AVOID the United States. AND even if Utah was technically a part of the States, no Mormon was going to treat that as any sort of authority over their prophet and their heavenly father. (Side note, the infamous Utah War occurred during 1857-8 when federal government and Mormons fought for control of Utah.)

But I did enjoy going to see the movie because I do love anything to do with Mormonism particularly pop culture portrayals.