The Mountain Meadows massacre represents, without question, the darkest moment in Latter-day Saint history. It took place during the low point of Mormon-"Gentile" relations, during the Utah War, an embarassing and ugly chapter in American history that Gentiles have preferred to forget, when an anti-Mormon cabal in Washington, D.C. convinced James Buchanan, against his better judgment, to send Johnston's Army to Utah to put down an imaginary Mormon "rebellion." With painful memories of Missouri persecutions and extermination orders, and of the assassinations of Joseph and Hyrum Smith still freshly emblazoned in their minds and hearts, Mormons in southern Utah allowed themselves to get carried away by war fervor and paranoia, and brutally massacred perhaps as many as 120 innocent men, women, and children of the Fancher Party at Mountain Meadows. Understanding the events surrounding the Mountain Meadows massacre, and, more importantly, understanding how a community that has "taken Christ's name" upon it, could plan and participate in such a brutal action, is of paramount importance. A film about the Mountain Meadows massacre addressing these issues could play a vital role in LDS understanding of this dark period of their own past, but more importantly, in helping Americans and the world to understand, to remember, and to prevent such dark deeds from ever happening again. Unfortunately, September Dawn is not the film to deepen that understanding.

Rather than exploring the question, both pressing and perplexing, of how peace-loving, Christian people could commit such a terrifying massacre, the film chooses instead to "explain" the massacre simply by asserting Mormons were not peace-loving, and not Christian. The film propagandistically portrays Mormons as a people who simply don't believe in love, who preached and believed doctrines of hate and intolerance, and who don't even seem to be aware of the existence of Jesus. In one embarassing segment of the movie, a member of the Fancher Party ("Emily Hudson" played by Tamara Hope) quotes New Testament passages about love and nonjudgmentalism to a Mormon ("Jonathan Samuelson," played by Trent Ford) who simply stares blankly at her and doesn't seem to have the slightest clue what she is talking about. "Judge not that ye be not judged," Emily says with exasperation, "How can you remove the mote in thy brother's eye, when you have a beam in your own eye?" In another, yet more embarassing segment, a Mormon bishop is portrayed insulting the Gentiles in prayer, and asking for God to curse the Fancher Party and send them to hell, with cut scenes to a Protestant pastor in the Fancher Party praying for God to bless the Mormons.

It should not be necessary to point this out, but a film such as this requires it. Not only do Mormons read, love, and embrace all of the teachings of the New Testament as much as any other Christian, the teachings of Christ quoted in the film are repeated almost verbatim in the Book of Mormon, and are reiterated and paraphrased in numerous other forms throughout the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants. Anyone unfamiliar with Mormonism who watches September Dawn would have to come away with the impression that Mormons barely know who Christ is, much less what he taught. Presenting lies about or distortions of Mormon belief and portraying Mormons as hate- and war-mongering "others" is precisely the kind of behavior that contributes to genocidal hate -- and that, incidentally, led to the actual, historical persecution of Mormons in the nineteenth century. At points, the film was so ham-handed and innaccurate in its portrayals, I couldn't keep myself from laughing out loud at the absurdity. Unfortunately, I was the only one in the theater who was laughing. The predominanly non-Mormon, Minnesotan audience at the screening seemed to be silently eating it up.

Now don't get me wrong. As a gay, excommunicated Mormon, I am the last one to gloss over the possibility that Mormons can hold prejudices just like everyone else, or that they are capable of hate. Perhaps some Mormons somewhere actually even pray the kinds of hateful prayers "Bishop Samuelson" (played by Jon Voight) prayed in the film -- though I personally have never prayed such a prayer or heard one prayed. Any film dealing responsibly with the Mountain Meadows massacre probably should come to terms with the darker aspects of nineteenth-century Mormonism, including the Danite organization (mispronounced by Terence Stamp in his role as Brigham Young to sound as if it were a secret organization of Danes), and the -- now officially repudiated -- doctrine of Blood Atonement and the "Oath of Vengeance," an oath that nineteenth-century Mormons swore to avenge the murder of Joseph Smith. Predictably, September Dawn passed over the opportunity to take a serious, historically accurate look at these elements of the Mormon past. Instead, it just took a distorted view of these subjects and ran amok. There is no evidence that the doctrine of Blood Atonement was explicitly used as a rationale for the massacre of the Fancher Party, a misleading notion that was pressed repeatedly throughout the film. And Mormons never, by the way, regarded either Joseph Smith or Brigham Young as "God on Earth." The film did not miss the opportunity to make other defamatory associations, such as to stress the point that some of the events of the massacre took place on the now ominous date of September 11 (1857).

Whenever a terrible event such as the Mountain Meadows massacre is treated, context is everything. While the film got some of the facts of the actual massacre itself right, rarely have I seen a film about such an event that got the context so wrong. I was deeply disappointed. When I first learned in the pages of Sunstone magazine about the making of this film, I was eager to see it, eager to see how it portrayed this very difficult and important topic. I was also eager to see one of my favorite actors, Terence Stamp, play one of my favorite historical figures, Brigham Young. There were other star-caliber actors in the film as well, including Jon Voight as Bishop Jacob Samuelson, Jon Gries in the role of John D. Lee, and Dean Cain as Joseph Smith. Unfortunately, the film is so flawed, I could not recommend it to anybody, except perhaps to Mormon reviewers who will, yet again, be burdened with the task of countering anti-Mormon defamation.

I would encourage anyone interested in the Mountain Meadows massacre as a historical event to read the book on the subject that is still considered definitive, Juanita Brooks' The Mountain Meadows Massacre.