Well, yesterday was our SEVENTEENTH wedding anniversary. Don't try to figure out how old this must make me. :-) This Halloween will be the TWENTIETH anniversary of our first date. Remind me to tell that story sometime. :-) We celebrated by going out to lunch at Applebee's, sans kids.
I also decided to let dh have one of the things I had ordered for him for Father's Day. Deseret Book helpfully sent HIM the confirmation email instead of me, so he already knew what it all was anyway, lol. (Deseret Book did that in REVERSE a couple of Christmases ago, sending ME the confirmation email for my own gift from dh, lol) So I gave him the new DVD of The Work and the Glory II: American Zion. We decided to pop it in last night. We had enjoyed the first Work and the Glory movie, naturally we felt the book was better, but still, we had liked it.
Not so with this one, I'm afraid. Not only was it only very LOOSELY based on the books, it even played loose with the facts of Church history, and I for one cannot understand why on earth they would need to change the amazing true story of Church history around for a movie.
For starters, I was pretty irritated at the departures from the book. Benjamin Steed did NOT go on march with Zion's Camp. Melissa Steed was NOT a whiny, backtalking brat who ought to have been whipped. Some of the very best segments of the book were totally left out. The movie left the viewer wondering why on earth Jessica did not go back with that nice Joshua, especially since in the MOVIE version of their fight, Joshua got hurt much worse than did Jessica.
Some of the most dramatic scenes, some of them true Church history scenes, were totally left out, including a favorite of mine, the true and amazing story of the boatful of pioneers led to Ohio by Lucy Mack Smith, and the story of how her faith got them through when other pioneers were stranded by ice. Where on earth was this story? The scene at Fishing River, when the Lord protected Zion's Camp--it was there, but not nearly as amazing and dramatic as it could have been. It came across as rather flat, in fact. I am left to wonder if the producers simply didn't have enough money to do it right, or whether they just weren't as moved by these true stories and wanted to hype up the Benjamin-Joshua-Nathan conflicts artificially instead.
The departures from real Church history are what bugged me the most. I kept telling my kids "Just forget this, this is NOT how it happened!" Perhaps the Lucy Mack Smith and ice part was left out on purpose because Joseph and Emma arrived in Kirtland, in a wagon, in the SPRING with the trees already leafed out, not in February in the snow in a sleigh. Why mess with that? The movie has the scene in which Joseph Smith was drug out of his home in Kirtland, taken from his sick baby he was comforting, and beaten and tarred and feathered, all messed up too. In the movie, the baby dies DURING the night while Lucy Smith cleans the tar off of Joseph and Emma sits in a chair crying. (another side note, I did not think Emma was portrayed as the strong woman she really was in this film either) Then, after being cleaned up, Joseph goes to work at the TEMPLE site, leaving bereaved Emma alone. That is not what happened either! EMMA was part of the cleaning up of Joseph, the baby did not die that night, but 2 or 3 days later, and Joseph did not go to work at the temple site the next morning, but preached at Sunday services. Why on earth do we need to change this story? The movie has Joseph making prophecies and predictions that he did in fact make, but many of them were made much later than the movie has it--after the temple was completed, or even in Nauvoo, not Kirtland.
I must admit to being disappointed. If the real story was changed to reflect what the director and producers want to have happened, then their vision of the story is far from my own. If it just reflects time and money constraints, then they should wait until they have the means, and then tell the story RIGHT.
I could handle departures from the book storyline. After all, it's not the Gospel, it's a work of fiction. But I have a much harder time overlooking departures from the truth of Church history. This is a story deserving of Academy Award-quality filmmaking. All the drama, faith, tragedy, pain, overcoming love are all in the story already. Why tamper with it? It certainly cannot be improved upon. It was written by the Master Storyteller Himself, and cast carefully and deliberately with the best He had to offer. It's a shame to see it reduced and manipulated like any other "plot element"