Setembro Negro

I was about to disregard this movie and thought that maybe I'd check out what people have written about it on IMDb. Frankly, to any one that is not Mormon, the thorough and complete disgust I see on this site from people who are very obviously from the Mormon community doesn't dissuade me from watching this movie, it actually encourages me. When people take so much effort to convince you not to watch something, I for one, think it's probably worth watching. I have watched it now and I must say, it wasn't the awful movie we are made to believe it was by the people posting on this site. To the contrary, I found it a very powerful and compelling movie and I'm glad to have watched it. I will certainly do some historical research to see where the alleged biases come in, but I have a feeling the movie will certainly not be quite the fiction that some of the posters have made it out to be.

My actual rating would have been a 6 or a 7 at best, but since there are people (I would assume those in the Mormon community) trying to bring the rating down simply because it shows a group of their people in an unfavourable light, I gave it a 10 to balance it out.

I have been hearing many bad reviews for this movie, panning it for a perceived 'blanket condemnation of the Mormon Church.' What so many of these reviews refuse to take into consideration is the actual character of territorial Utah in the 1850s and the rest of the historical evidence.

The plain simple fact is that Utah at the time WAS full of zealous religiosity. Every statement made by Brigham Young in the movie comes from his published sermons. Utah territory was a harsh and repressive society, and the movie portrays this accurately.

This movie is in NO WAY a blanket condemnation of Mormonism, though it IS a condemnation of the Mormon Church *IN THE 1850s.* To say that this movie portrays them like "homesteading Nazis," is completely unfair.

John Voight's performance gives a perfect example of the sort of character found in Mormon authorities in the period, while his sons show us some of the various types of dissension, the outright rejection, and the horrified self-loathing obedience.

The only thing I can see wrong here is that they could have put some hostile people in the wagon company, as undoubtedly there would have been. I can understand why they did not however, in order to drive home just how terrible this massacre was. Whether or not Brigham Young was directly involved in the events is up for debate, but there can be no doubt that the teachings he espoused and the environment they engendered were a significant part of what caused the massacre.

In short, most of the negative reviews come either from Mormons or people who have very little background with regards to the history of Territorial Utah

9/11, but century and a half before the recent one. Back in 1857, in Utah, a group of settlers was killed by local Mormons. This movie tells a story about more than a hundred men, women, and children who lost their lives in the horrifying massacre. It's not a masterpiece of cinema, but it is definitely worth your time.

7/10

If memory serves, president Buchanan was using the Mormons as "Wag the Dog" Scapegoats to distract the country from the political tensions that eventually led up to the Civil war. This is why he sent a good fraction of the US army into an invasion of Utah. At the time, the military was about the only US institution representing both North and South.

Buchanon's hope was that by demonizing the Mormons ( especially over the practice of polygamy ), he could unite the country.

IIRC, Buchanan and Brigham Young were personally-acquainted and on good terms. So the use of military force in a situation that could have easily been solved politically made the Mormon leadership even more paranoid.

Again IIRC, an important source of income for the Mormans was resupplying immigrants. Slaughering your customer base is not a good business practice.

This is a story that needs telling, and perhaps a bare documentary would have gone unnoticed. I was bothered, however, by the introduction of an unlikely horse-breaking scene, a subsequent act of remarkable generosity, and a love-at-first-sight romance. These run counter to the actual events and distort the nature of the massacre. Apart from that I liked the portrayal very much. It does a good job of portraying the distrust the Mormons had of the rest of the nation, including the government, of their resentment toward Missouri and toward the mob that murdered Joseph Smith in Illinois, and the failure of the government that had him in its custody.

Although the movie was shot in Alberta, the scenery is not unlike that in the Mountain Meadows area, except, of course, for the lake or river in which the young emigrant was able to bathe. I could be mistaken, but I don't think there is one.