Mysterious Circumstance: The Death of Meriwether Lewis

Mysterious Circumstance portrays what it feels like when you and your friends gather together to theorize the truth of mysteries. The diversity seen in everyone's ability to act through completely different scenarios and provide a variety of personalities per character is an accomplishment of masterful talent.

The film eludes to many different possible outcomes without ever stating to know more than is common knowledge. The film is an experience of it's own kind. It's almost an Anthology of possible scenarios. The funnest part is going through each story and spotting the similarities and differentiating between them.

What comes off as a passion project to many will also come to be a lovable classic in the homes of many who love a good mystery and to those who love theorizing.

From reading "Undaunted Courage" by Stephen Ambrose, I was acquainted with the suspicious "suicide" of the famous explorer Meriwether Lewis at a Tennessee "tavern." "Mysterious Circumstances" is an exploration of alternative versions of what might have happened, filmed with considerable attention to authenticity in locale and the era. Many historians have accepted the "suicide" version, but Lewis was traveling on a notoriously dangerous trail, and shooting oneself twice and then cutting oneself "from head to foot with a razor" is a suspicious "suicide," to say the least. The various accounts of the same event are evocative of Akira Kurosawa's approach to storytelling in "Rashomon" (1950), the one flaw being that the versions here are not clearly accounts by different witnesses to the same events but are perhaps rooted in later speculation by those who found the accepted version singularly bizarre. The first version depicted in this movie seems to be close to the version that prevailed, essentially by default. And it is, indeed, played as singularly bizarre. Two previous reviewers (action addicts, no doubt) rated this movie 1 star; 11 other previous reviewers rated it 9 or 10 stars. No way does this average 4.8. My quick calculation makes it about 7.6. This film is worth watching if you have more than a juvenile attention span and are intrigued by mystery.

So why create a movie about the death of Lewis of Lewis and Clark, when no one has any idea how he died?

The case is still unsolved and the worst part of the movie is that random, sometimes incredibly stupid stories are made up though two hours of what could have happened......really.....so we get five totally different random stories about what could have happened on the night that he died.

I kept waiting for a conclusion to this stupid movie, but there was not one....just make believe stories....a couple of which were not even believable Why not make up ten stories and make the movie four hours long....two hours wasted....no end.

Poorly written. Poor dialogue. Poor acting. Poor filmography. Everyone is "clean!" and living in the backwoods of the US. M. Lewis is played as if he is n imbecile. You can hear something buzzing in the background of several scenes. Another reviewer suggested it was a cell phone. Not sure.

I do not blame this on the actors. They could only work with what they were given. A remake, perhaps with a whole different script seems in order.

I am not certain why the director and producer put this out...other than perhaps they got funding so, "what the heck?"

All of the early "10 star" reviews seem to be phony, at best.

I agree with the "over-the-top" performance by Evan Williams. Reminded me of a high-school play. And the woman said, "It was very cold, even for October". Yet not a single character was wearing a coat? As others have commented, it does nothing to solve this historical mystery. I suppose one positive thing is, it made me research actual events about this man's untimely death. Apparently it is yet unsolved, and his family wanted his body exhumed, 100+ years after the fact. I'm in agreement with those who say suicide is unlikely. I gave up on this film about 20 minutes in. Good luck to you if you hold on longer.