![\"\"](\"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_MwnH1kpbPRM\/RsuvASkjEEI\/AAAAAAAAAgM\/cdNJ_aoWV9Q\/s1600-h\/septemberdawn-a.jpg\")
<\/a>After a few postponements, September Dawn<\/a><\/i> \u2014 a dramatization of the Mountain Meadows massacre<\/a>, in which a wagon train full of pioneers passing through Utah was slaughtered by local Mormons<\/a> on September 11, 1857 \u2014 is finally opening this Friday.<\/span><\/p>\n
My review will be up that day at CT Movies. In the meantime, the pre-release buzz has begun. The Los Angeles Times<\/a><\/i> reports:<\/p>\n Co-writer-director of \u201cSeptember Dawn\u201d Christopher Cain dismisses the idea the movie puts a bad light on Mormonism, correlating the religious zealotry the film depicts with the clash of cultures that has led to America\u2019s \u201cwar on terror\u201d and twin wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t have an agenda with the Mormon Church<\/a>,\u201d Cain said. \u201cWhat I do have is a theoretical view of how we can look at what\u2019s happening today.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe live in a time where the news is dominated by the religious, fanatical world \u2014 a time where a 20-year-old kid with his whole life ahead of him can walk onto a bus and blow himself up and war is being waged by a bunch of nut-cases \u2018over there.\u2019 Well, it happened here 150 years ago. I just saw this [movie] as an opportunity to look at how this happened in our own backyard \u2014 and not that long ago.\u201d . . .<\/p>\n For his part, [Jon] Voight was drawn to his role \u2014 a man of the cloth whose deep piety results in mass murder, carried out in part by his own son \u2014 as a means of addressing what he sees as a pressing issue.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not one who goes looking for those references, but it is a chilling irony that this happened 150 years ago on Sept. 11,\u201d Voight said.<\/p>\n \u201cThis film is obviously very relevant today in terms of what we\u2019re faced with: religious fanaticism endangering all democracy. It\u2019s our own history, and I hadn\u2019t known it before.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n For Michael Medved<\/a>, writing in USA Today<\/i>, the fact that this film zeroes in on 19th-century Mormonism as a sort of metaphor<\/i> for 21st-century Islam \u2014 instead of zeroing in on Islam itself \u2014 is evidence that \u201cHollywood\u201d is sticking its head in the sand:<\/p>\n The film\u2019s deliberately drawn analogy between Mountain Meadows and 9\/11 raises the most puzzling question about this peculiar project: Why frame an indictment of violent religiosity by focusing on long-ago Mormon leaders rather than contemporary Muslims who perpetrate unspeakable brutalities every day?<\/p>\n In fact, Hollywood\u2019s reluctance to portray Islamo-Nazi killers remains difficult, if not impossible, to explain. Since 2001\u2019s devastating attacks, big studios have released numerous movies with terrorists as part of the plot, including Sum of All Fears<\/a><\/i>, Red Eye<\/i>, Live Free or Die Hard<\/a><\/i>, The Bourne Ultimatum<\/a><\/i> and many more, but virtually all of them show terrorists as Europeans or Americans with no Islamic connections. Even historically based thrillers downplay Muslim terrorism: Steven Spielberg\u2019s Munich<\/a><\/i> spends more than 80% of its running time showing Israelis as killers and Palestinians as victims, while Oliver Stone\u2019s World Trade Center<\/a><\/i> highlights the aftermath of the attacks with no depiction of those who perpetrated them. United 93<\/a><\/i> stands out among recent releases in showing Islamic killers in acts of terror \u2014 and it would be hard to tell that story without portraying the suicidal hijackers.<\/p>\n Beyond topicality, Tinseltown\u2019s respect for Muslim sensibilities has proved so pervasive that there has been little or no reference to bloody episodes of the Islamic past. In Kingdom of Heaven<\/a><\/i>, Muslim followers of Saladdin appear far more sympathetic than the thuggish, devious Christian Crusaders. Despite the fact that founders of Islam built their religion through centuries of conquest vastly more bloody than incidents at the beginnings of Mormonism, it\u2019s unthinkable that filmmakers would ever depict Mohammed and his followers as viciously as they handle Brigham Young in September Dawn<\/i>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I think Medved overstates the negative portrayal of the Christians in Kingdom of Heaven<\/i>; the knights played by Liam Neeson and David Thewlis, to cite just two prominent characters, are clearly meant to be positive. But yeah, it is<\/i> interesting how books like The Sum of All Fears<\/i> and The Bourne Ultimatum<\/i> featured Muslim or Palestinian terrorists as the bad guys, whereas the movies cast neo-Nazis or American federal agents as the villains instead.<\/p>\n As for whether a movie about an atrocity committed by Mormons ought to be made or released, I say why not? All<\/i> historical subjects are acceptable fodder for the big screen. The question, here as elsewhere, is not what<\/i> movies are about, but how<\/i> they are about them. But even the badly made movies can bring things to our attention that we might never have heard about otherwise, and even the badly made movies can provoke us to do a little research and learn what really<\/i> happened way back when.<\/p>\n And don\u2019t worry, I say all that while fully keeping in mind G.K. Chesterton<\/a>\u2018s great essay on the perils of historical films<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After a few postponements, September Dawn \u2014 a dramatization of the Mountain Meadows massacre, in which a wagon train full of pioneers passing through Utah was slaughtered by local Mormons on September 11, 1857 \u2014 is finally opening this Friday. My review will be up that day at CT Movies. In the meantime, the pre-release […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n