I just read through Dan's comments. I have to again reiterate that I was writing them as I was watching the film, they're not a fully fleshed out review. I am glad I graduated from Dumdud to Rupert, but I have no idea what the connection between me and the new name is.
DCP wrote:Rupert seems to believe that the oxen scene at the film’s beginning involves computer-generated imagery (CGI). It’s unclear, but he may actually imagine that the oxen themselves are computer-generated. They aren’t. Our producer had to work long and hard to find a useable yoke of oxen. That’s why the scene featuring them was among the last that we filmed.
That's really cool. The way they pulled in tandem at the end made me think perhaps it was not accomplishable without CGI. Also Brigham Young using something similar to Star Wars force powers probably biased me towards thinking I was watching CGI.
Rupert is critical of our portrayal of Thomas Sharp as having incited the mob. (Another critic confusedly laments that we’ve tried to blame all of the problems in Nauvoo on “Thomas Marsh,” who doesn’t appear in the film.) But Thomas Sharp did incite the mob. This is historically undeniable.
Again, these were hasty notes. The characters were difficult to follow, even for someone interested in church history like me.
Rupert even complains about a fly appearing in the scene in which Joseph’s death is announced. Perhaps he imagines that flies don’t exist in western Illinois? Or that casting a fly in the film was an anachronism?
Again, just a note I thought was interesting.
He mocks the film for giving Brigham Young’s first wife, Miriam Works, only about thirty seconds of screen time. But this is simply not true. (Perhaps Rupert’s watch has run down?) She appears in multiple scenes, each of them longer than thirty seconds.
Relative to the 2 hour length of the movie, her appearance seems very small.
Rupert reports that his wife thought the movie — and particularly, it seems, the “tree-chopping scene” — somewhat “homoerotic.” In charity, I think that I probably shouldn’t comment on someone’s perception of friendship between men as, somehow, ipso facto “gay.” Rupert himself wonders why Brigham spends so much time in the movie with Heber C. Kimball. It might be, of course, because they were neighbors and best friends in Mendon, New York, from the time before their conversion and because they were fellow apostles. (When the First Presidency was reorganized after the death of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, Brigham Young called Heber C. Kimball to serve as his first counselor.) Such things could potentially have played a role, I suspect . . .
Once again, as someone who was watching the movie for the first time, the characters and their relationship was very difficult to follow. My wife isn't as familiar with Mormon culture, and I thought her perspective was interesting even if I didn't myself completely agree.
A couple of years after Miriam’s death, Brigham — a young widower with two small daughters — married Mary Ann Angell. Rupert describes this as “polygamy” but, of course, it wasn’t. Unless, of course, one labels as a “polygamist” every widow or widower who remarries after the death of a spouse.
It's polygamy in the same way that many current apostles are polygamists - they're sealed to multiple women for eternity.
Rupert notices with apparent disapproval that Emma seems to be “squeamish” about Joseph’s being tarred and feathered in Ohio. As if such harmless, innocent hijinks somehow merit her disapproval!
This has been addressed above
In one scene, Brigham and Heber, who are both greatly weakened by illness, manage to stand up in a wagon as they depart on a mission. To encourage their wives, they cry out “Hurrah for Israel!” Rupert denigrates this as a “weird adventure motif.” Well, I suppose there’s no accounting for taste, but the details of the scene are firmly based on actual historical records.
It continues the motif established early in the film, that Brigham is on some kind of special adventure. I would contrast this with, say, how priests in the film "The Mission" are portrayed.
Rupert complains that all of the scenery in Six Days in August looks the same. I’m not sure why he thinks so. In any case, the shooting for the film was done in western New York; Ontario, Canada; Tennessee; and Idaho; as well as at the Latter-day Saint Motion Picture Studio in Provo and the “This is the Place Monument” in Salt Lake City.
I had this thought while watching Brigham visit Britain. This seems to confirm my impression that the scene wasn't actually shot on location.
Although they often appeared with Heber C. Kimball and Brigham Young, Rupert somehow never managed to identify Wilford Woodruff or George A. Smith and reports being still confused by them. That puzzles me, since they’re repeatedly named in the film.
Again, the characters were very difficult for me to follow. I may be the only audience member to experience this, I'd love to know if anyone else had similar difficulty.
Remembering that the title of the film is Six Days in August, Rupert complains that we completely omitted Day 3. It seems, though, that he must have nodded off or gone to the restroom at about the one hour and thirty-two minute mark.
I believe one of the days was omitted, if it wasn't day 3. Several of the days consisted of someone arriving in town, which seems hardly noteworthy enough to even deserve its own title card.
Finally, Rupert wants to know why Joseph Smith Jr. isn’t depicted as a factor during the “six days” of maneuvering between Sidney Rigdon and the Twelve that occurred in August 1844 and that provide the title of the movie. The obvious answer, of course, is that Joseph Smith Jr. is dead by that point. So I suppose that Rupert really means to ask about Joseph Smith III. But Joseph III was only eleven years old at the time, and he wasn’t a factor. The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints wasn’t founded until 1860, fully sixteen years after the events centrally represented in the film
Again just my thoughts during the film, and I thought it was interesting that at 11 years old, this potential successor wasn't even shown.
