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Terence Stamp as Brigham Young

Don't expect the Mormon church, which has always denied Young's complicity in the massacre, to change its tune because of this film, though. At nearly every point, September Dawn paints the early Mormons as fanatical brainwashed zealots, and the wild, unstable camera angles that cinematographer Juan Ruiz-Anchia uses when Young or Voight's bishop speak to their followers only drive the point further home. There may indeed be some basis for this characterization—the sermons Young gives, in which he exhorts his followers to slit throats and shed blood, are reportedly historical—but it's not exactly the sort of thing that will encourage dialogue.

What makes this portrayal even more questionable is the stark contrast the movie draws between the Mormons and the settlers. An introductory voice-over tells us that the massacre took place when "two different worlds met . . . one of love, one of hate," and the film never leaves us in any doubt as to which is which. The Mormons are closed-minded and spiteful, but the settlers are so open-minded that Emily's father, a preacher, doesn't bat an eye when she says she wants to marry Jonathan. Shouldn't he be just a little concerned about that whole "unequally yoked" thing?

To its credit, September Dawn does not secularize the settlers, but allows them to be the Christians—cultural or otherwise—that they presumably were. So when Emily finds aspects of Jonathan's life puzzling, the dialogue that emerges between them is a dialogue between two religious points of view. How much sense this will make to the modern secular moviegoer is anyone's guess, but it's good to know that the filmmakers didn't go too far out of their way to make the story "accessible." Those who want to know what really happened, though, are advised to look elsewhere.

Talk About It

1. Have you ever fallen in love with someone from another religious group? How did you handle the experience? How would you advise someone else in that situation?
2. What do you make of this film's portrayal of the early Mormons? Did you think it should be more "balanced"? Did it seem accurate enough to you? How would you have responded to this film if you were a Mormon? What if the film had been pretty much the same, but had been about atrocities committed by Christians?
3. What do you make of this film's portrayal of the Christian settlers? Did they seem naïve? Reasonable enough? What would you have done in their position?
4. Why do you think people were (and are) attracted to Mormonism? Note the scene where Bishop Samuelson says Joseph Smith picked him up off the street, and now he has it in himself to become a god. How is this similar to, or different from, Christian forms of evangelization?
5. Have you ever felt persecuted? How hard has it been to love your enemies? What has happened when you have done so? Why do you think Jesus tells us to do this?
6. What do you do when people claim to have heard specific messages from God? Is there a way of telling which messages are really from him? If so, what is it?

The Family Corner

September Dawn is rated R for violence, including numerous gunshot wounds, a body floating in the river, and various other forms of murder. Also, a man's testicles are nailed to a wall, and a man is briefly seen from behind when he is baptized in the nude. (The baptism in the film is a Mormon ceremony, but Christians were baptized in the nude in the early church, too, to identify with Christ's nakedness on the cross and with Adam's innocence in the Garden of Eden.)

Photos © Copyright Black Diamond Pictures

© Peter T. Chattaway subject to licensing agreement with Christianity Today International. All rights reserved. Click for reprint information.

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