2000
AML Award:
Film
Presented to:
Richard Dutcher
For:
God's Army
When considering Richard Dutcher's film God's Army, the
immediate temptation is to focus on this film more for what it seems
to herald than for what it actually is. Since LDS filmmaking has now
so clearly taken such a major step forward with the release of
God's Army, cinema can now be said to have joined the
conversation with our culture that so many LDS novelists, playwrights,
poets and essayists have been engaging in for generations. God's
Army seems to presage a movement, a renaissance, in which Richard
Dutcher, in the best LDS tradition, plays the role of pioneer.
And yet we ought not allow the God's Army event to overshadow
the film itself. And it's such a lovely, intimate film, a film of
understatement and modesty. A powerful miracle scene is treated
quietly, without intrusive underscoring or acting histrionics. A
prayer scene is accompanied, not by violins or choral angels, but by
the simple sound of a car engine sputtering to a start. The camera
work is inobtrusive, and yet the camera is always in the right place,
and the lighting convincingly captures the shabbiness of missionary
apartments.
Dutcher's writing has the same understated complexity as we find in
the best fiction of Doug Thayer or John Bennion. His characters are
rich, multi-faceted, multi-dimensional. Dutcher's missionaries are
believable both as young men and as God's servants, easily confused
and yet also idealistic, given to practical jokes, but also capable of
great faith.
The story of the making of God's Army, the struggle to raise
funds and to find a distributor, is in many ways as inspirational as
the film itself. God's Army is a fine and an important film,
but it was also a commercial success. That may be the most
encouraging thing about it. And so, the Association for Mormon
Letters honors not only a remarkable piece of LDS writing, but also
the work of a producer of courage and tenacity, a director of vision
and imagination, an actor of sensitivity and insight, and a marketer
of creativity and skill. It is not hyperbole to declare God's
Army the most remarkable and important film in the history of
Mormon letters. It is a pleasure to honor this extraordinary movie.