Smith, that most common surname in the English language, is defined as, “one who makes or shapes (a metal object) by heating it in a fire or furnace and beating or hammering it”–an oddly apropos name for a man who forged a new religion from metal plates, and who repeatedly passed through the furnace of affliction himself to do it. Yet a Smith is also one who works at a “forge”, which is the root of the more pejorative word “forger,” meaning “a person who falsifies, or a creator of false tales.” Such has also been the much more widely applied description of Joseph Smith generally.
It is from both meanings of “Smith” that Richard Dutcher–the film-maker whose early-2000s films God’s Army and Brigham City briefly gave a veneer of Indie-respectability to the LDS Cinema movement, before he abruptly left the Church himself in 2007–appears to draw upon for Smith, his long-gestating biopic on Mormonism’s founder. Initially entitled The Prophet when he first announced it clear back in the halcyon days of 2003 (and rumored to have Val Kilmer and F. Murray Abraham attached at one point), the film was by all appearances going to give Smith the standard, straight-forward biopic treatment, primarily involving flashbacks while Smith is interrogated by Illinois governor Thomas Ford shortly before his 1844 murder.
And that is indeed how Smith appears to open at first: over the somber strains of John Taylor singing “A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief” a cappella, an angry mob storms up the steps of Carthage Jail, breaks down the door, Smith and his compatriots put up a fight, but soon enough the eponymous prophet is shot out the second story window as he utters the stirring last words, “O Lord My God”. For a Mormon audience, the story-beats will be familiar (if more graphic than anything ever put on screen before), such that one might wonder if Dutcher had in fact recovered his faith after a long night in the wilderness.
But that is not how the film progresses, however.
Flashing back to Smith’s interrogation by Illinois Governor Thomas Ford shortly before his murder, the film at first blush appears to be taking cues from the recent Tanya Harding biopic, wherein the impossibility of knowing the truth–or perhaps more precisely, how a salacious story will always take interest over the unknowable facts–becomes the central thrust of the film. For Smith recounts the early rise of the Mormon church (with story beats that will, again, be familiar to a Mormon audience, e.g. the First Vision of God and Christ, the Angel Moroni and the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, Liberty Jail and the Missouri massacres, etc.).
Ford by contrast confronts him with an alternative history based on various affidavits of former friends and enemies (with story beats that will, again, be familiar to a Mormon-critical audience, e.g. early treasure hunting, secret polygamy, fake-writing the Book of Mormon–if you’ve ever seen that one South Park episode, you already know the basics).
Yet Smith is just as willing to poke holes and alternate interpretations into Ford’s reading of his history as Ford is Smith’s, and it is never quite clear where the film wishes the viewer’s sympathies to reside. Smith is indeed presented as affable and sincere, but it is never quite clear if that is due to his prophetic calling or just part of his long con; Ford comes off as gruff and commanding, but it is never quite clear if that is supposed to make him seem like an honest skeptic seeing through the b.s., or just another oily politician trying to save his hide. Throughout the film’s first act, Smith appears to be an agnostic’s take on the rise of early Mormonism, a presentation of two alternative histories without judgment, leaving it to the viewer to decide for themselves. We have seen this sort of film many times (Rashomon, Courage Under Fire, The Last Duel, you know the drill).
Hence how refreshing it is that Dutcher goes in a fresh new direction entirely.
For as Ford’s interrogation reaches its apparent climax, he exclaims, “I do not know whether you are a fool or if you only think I am, but the question now is: just what do you think happens now”–and then the film promptly explores multiple alternate timelines.
That’s right, Smith abruptly abandons any sense of historical realism, and promptly transforms into a multiverse film, one with a brazen metafictional self-awareness of where it is situated in 19th century history. For example, Smith’s first proposed timeline (narrated in rapid-fire hypercut) is simply one where the fiery and impetuous William Harrison had worn a coat to his recent 1841 inauguration after all, and therefore did not die of pneumonia 30 days into office as America’s shortest tenured President, thus never allowing Vice-President John Tyler to succeed him. Hence, President Harrison was the incumbent campaigning for re-election in 1844, and so responded to Joseph Smith’s inquiries with a fire-rousing oath to force reparations upon the recalcitrant Missourians. As a result, Smith convinced the Latter-day Saints to vote as a bloc for Harrison, by which he secured Illinois—and thus the entire victory in that contentious election—in favor of the Whig candidate Harrison. Their loyalty to Harrison was rewarded with Federal Troops dispatched to southern Illinois to properly protect Joseph Smith while in jail in Carthage, Il under trumped-up charges of sedition and treason. After his acquittal at a neutral court site up in Springfield (which trial was observed by a young Abraham Lincoln), Mormon tensions with their Illinois neighbors gradually simmered down. Within a generation they were thoroughly ensconced in the region, as Midwestern as Mennonites and corn fields.
Though they had thrown their weight whole-heartedly behind the rabidly pro-slavery Harrison, theirs was nevertheless simply a political alliance of momentary necessity; hence, when the Whig Party inevitably collapsed and its voters shifted to the nascent Republican Party (founded in nearby Iowa Territory), the Mormons had little ambivalence about shifting their allegiances as well, swiftly adopting the Republicans’ Anti-Slavery Platform (which would reflect Joseph Smith’s own Abolitionist platform himself when he ran for President). Indeed, the Saints became avid members of the Underground Railroad, assisting hundreds of slaves escaping out of Missouri (for whom there was little love lost), several of whom eventually became Apostles during the Reconstruction-era, as Smith matter-of-factly continued his policy of ordaining Black people to the Priesthood. The Nauvoo Legion acquitted itself well during the Civil War, being one of the few white units willing to fight alongside the Buffalo Soldiers—for which heroism, an elderly Joseph Smith was even granted an audience with President Abraham Lincoln and the Abolitionist Frederick Douglass, as depicted in a famous photograph. Post-war, the Nauvoo Legion became fully integrated into the U.S. military as part of the Illinois National Guard.
By the Year of our Lord 2,000, Smith declares, the greater Nauvoo/Zarahemla metropolitan area has become the largest urban center in both southern Illinois and eastern Iowa, rivaling Chicago and St. Louis as the pre-eminent metropolis of the Midwest; it is the cosmopolitan home of several sky-scrapers, a respected art museum with the largest collection of Dutch Post-Impressionist paintings outside of Amsterdam, and to popular NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB franchises.
“That may be so,” says Ford insouciantly, “But have you instead considered this…” and promptly informs Smith of his forthcoming murder and the ascension of his own apostle Brigham Young to the Church Presidency, and the exodus of the Mormons to the Great Salt Lake Basin. Where Ford diverges from our current timeline, however, is during the 1850s Utah War, which was an unmitigated disaster for the Saints: Salt Lake City was burned to the ground, the Saints massacred, and Brigham Young hung from the scaffolding of the never-completed Salt Lake Temple. The survivors in the surrounding settlements became the only non-indigenous group in U.S. history to be herded into reservations. The Mormon resettlement zone comprised what on most Average Earths are known as southern Idaho and western Montana.
Tensions eventually simmered down in the 20th century, though the LDS Church never fully recovered, either demographically or institutionally. A single small Temple was permitted to be built in the Idaho Falls conclave, and the Salt Lake Temple ruins are a pilgrimage site for the remnant faithful, like the wailing wall in Jerusalem is for the Jews. The Mormons themselves, when they are regarded at all, are largely now considered a curio; and tourists passing through “Mormon country” tend to treat them as a much sadder, more traumatized version of the Amish—a people stuck out of time, from whom you might buy some old-fashioned blankets and gawk at their (illegal) polygomy, but little else.
To this more despairing history, Smith promptly counters with an alternative history wherein, yes, he is killed in Carthage, and Brigham Young leads the Mormons in exodus to the Great Salt Lake Basin–but this time, in 1848, General Santa Anna rallies the Mexican military to repel and expel the invading U.S. Army during the Mexican-American War. Manifest Destiny fatally defeated, all of what is otherwise known as California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, Wyoming, and yes, Utah, remains part of the Mexican Republic into the present day. The Mormons who had recently settled the Great Salt Lake Basin of Upper California, however, were permitted to stay, since they had been forcibly expelled from the United States themselves, and besides, were swiftly cultivating an otherwise inhospitable region. Seeing the United States’ disastrous defeat in Mexico as a sure sign of divine judgment upon a hypocritical nation for the slayings of the Prophet Joseph, Brigham Young could not sing high enough praises of the Mexican government. In numerous fiery sermons from the Tabernacle pulpit, he persuades the Saints to proudly embrace their new-found Mexican citizenship, even encouraging the learning of Spanish in their homes and schools. The California Gold Rush that began the following year swiftly enriched the coffers of the Mexican Republic, allowing them to quickly modernize their economy and infrastructure, build railroads and public schools, strengthen their democracy, and fortify their military defenses. As such, they were able to easily repel the French forces of Napoleon III when he attempted to install a puppet emperor in 1861 (the revived Mormon Battalion, incidentally, was part of the national coalition that decisively defeated the French at the Battle of Puebla). The Mormons had backed the right horse, and their alliance with a Mexico-in-ascension was taken by the Saints themselves as further proof of the prophets’ inspiration.
Ford calls this version of events “a fine fairy-tale,” but then counters with another one wherein the American Civil War begins in 1852, not ’62, when a healthier President Zachary Taylor does not die early in office, but instead follows through on his threats to burn the South to the ground when they threaten secession. There is no Missouri Compromise to postpone the inevitable, but a full-bore bloody conflict—and no steadying hand of Abraham Lincoln to restrain the bloodshed. Likewise, the conservative revolt against President Mariano Arista in Mexico results not only in his exile, but in the newly-crowned Emperor Napoleon III of France attempting his bloody annexation of Mexico (at the conservatives’ invitation) a full decade early as well—and again, without the steely-eyed firmness of Benito Juarez to help weather the crisis. A panicky and inexperienced Napoleon III also attempts to simultaneously recover the Louisiana purchase and the Quebec territories amidst the chaos of the American Civil War—which results in not only a violent response by British Canada, but a foolhardy attempt by the latter to recover New England during this disaster as well.
The results of all these ill-timed and ill-considered North American wars ultimately resulted in the economic and political ruin of the entire continent. If the Mormons are no longer besieged by mobs and Feds, it is largely because the mobs have long since turned on each other as roving bands of post-apocalyptic warlords, and the Federal government no longer exists. Indeed, the absolutist authority of the Church President is feared and respected enough across the continent, such that he is sometimes called to serve as a power-broker between all these various sects; nevertheless, alliances are forged and broken among all these various competing states with alarming rapidity.
Back and forth, back and forth they go (one wonders where the hell Dutcher got the budget to dramatize all these competing timelines): they narrate a timeline wherein Mormon missionaries baptize a certain Hong Xuiquan in Guangzhou province of China–who promptly launches the Taiping Rebellion as not only a Christian but specifically Mormon revolt against the corrupt Qing Dynasty. This version, however, succeeds, and establishes of a theocratic dictatorship in the planet’s most populous country. Mormonism becomes primarily known globally as a Chinese religion, with a small and mostly irrelevant branch in the western United States.
They also narrate an alternative history wherein the Muslims won the Battle of Tours, Europe becomes an Islamic caliphate, and are who colonize the Americas in the 1500s; when certain of the colonies from the British Caliphate declare independence, establish religious liberty, wherein all citizens would be free to practice whatever branch of Abrahamic Monotheism (Sunni, Shi’ite, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, even Coptic Christianity) that so moved their individual conscious. It is here in this nascent Islamic Republic, that a young farmboy named Juzif al-Hidad enters a grove of trees in upstate New Cordoba, to pray unto Allah which of the many sects of Islam he must unite himself with. By his own account, he beholds a pillar of light wherein he beholds two personages—Allah and the Prophet Jesus—who, quoting the Qu’ran, instruct him to unite himself with no sect, for they are all in error. Rather, they instruct him to follow in the illustrious footsteps of the ancient prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon His Name) in bringing forth a new Qu’ran by which to restore the fullness of his doctrine, and that he was to make ready himself to assume the weighty role of the Mahdi, who prepares the Earth for the return of Jesus to defeat the al-Masīḥ ad-Dajjāl once and for all before the great and final judgment.
Ford also narrates an alternate timeline wherein Smith is a woman-prophet named Josephine–how then would her husband feel when she begins practicing polyandry? Smith counters with an alternate timeline wherein he is Black, an escaped slave from the deep South, organizing a Nat Turner’s rebellion, to bring down God’s wrath upon a hypocritical nation. They also narrate one wherein the socialist United Order established by Smith in Nauvoo spreads to the Russian Empire, resulting in the establishment of a Mormon-based Soviet Union. They narrate one wherein the exiled Mormons find an ancient and buried star-gate amongst arches of southern Utah, and from there travel to the far reaches of the universe–for Christ has created “many worlds”–where they can at last live their religion in peace.
The remainder of the film becomes absolutely wild, anarchic, and dazzling–such that the story of Joseph Smith and the rise of Mormonism almost feels mundane by comparison. Yet Dutcher’s purpose here does not appear to be to downplay the miraculous of the story, nor does he appear to be going for the cop-out explanation that maybe both Smith and Ford are right in alternate timelines. Rather, Dutcher seems to be trying to defamiliarize not only Mormon but also U.S., world, and even cosmic history (such are not separate concerns for Mormons), so that it all seems strange and new to us–that is, to restore a sense of wonder to our world. Such has often been described as the function of art generally. If there is any sort of moral to be gleaned from Smith, it is probably Hamlet’s, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”