Six Days in August

It tells the story of the martyrdom of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young's succession to the leadership. The story is very complicated with a lot of characters and the writer/director, Mark Goodman, does a fantastic job of making the story engaging and easy to follow. It was a well-written, well-acted film with beautiful cinematography and a great soundtrack. You may never have heard of any of these actors. But they were all great and I hope to see them in other films for years to come. It is worth staying for the closing credits to hear the song O Give Me Back My Prophet Dear, with lyrics by John Taylor, music by Rob Gardner, and sung by Casey Elliott. It is a great film that tells an important story in Church history.

I'm an active, lifelong member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. What a disappointment this movie is. Clearly, its intent was not to portray accurate history--but instead, to propagandize a misleading, self-serving narrative. It's a desperate attempt at damage control. A rapidly growing segment within the Church are discovering a mountain of well-documented evidence that flies in the face of the mythical narrative of this movie, and the producers must have recognized the severity of the implications of this growing movement. Here are just a few examples of this film's deception.

The film alleges that Hyrum Smith endorsed polygamy, despite Hyrum's lifelong, ardent, and repeated denunciation of the practice. The movie fails to account, for example, for Hyrum's well-documented discourse from April 9, 1844 (just 2 1/2 months before he was murdered), in which Hyrum declared these words regarding polygamy:

"I am authorized to tell you from henceforth, that any man who comes in and tells any such damn fool doctrine, to tell him to give up his license. None but a fool teaches such stuff; the devil himself is not such a fool.... Any one found guilty of such teaching will be published and his license will be taken from him.... I wish the Elders of Israel to understand it is lawful for a man to marry a wife, but it is unlawful to have more.... I despise a man who teaches a pack of stuff that will disgrace himself so.... I would call the Devil my brother before such a man."

Similarly, the movie fails to account for Joseph's vehement, unequivocal, and constant condemnation of polygamy--that, for example, Joseph gave discourse after discourse denouncing the practice, that he excommunicated those found teaching it or participating in it, that he instituted the Relief Society to empower women to fight against it, that he litigated against those who accused him of it, etc. Etc. The movie fails to account for the fact that there is no valid contemporaneous evidence implicating Joseph in the practice, including no posterity from the alleged polygamous wives. Joseph offered words like these (delivered to the Relief Society on March 31, 1842, two weeks after the Relief Society was organized) in rejection of polygamy:

"(Some men) say they have authority from Joseph or the first Presidency (to have multiple wives) and thus with a lie in their mouth deceive & debauch the innocent under the assumption that they are authorized from these sources! May God forbid! ... No such authority ever has, ever can, or ever will be given to any man & if any man has been guilty of any such thing let him be treated with utter contempt & let the curse of God fall on his head... All persons pretending to be authorized by us or having any permit or sanction from us are & will be liars & base imposters & you are authorized on the very first intimation of the kind to denounce them as such ... Whether they are prophets, seers, or Revelators, patriarchs, Twelve apostles, Elders, Priests. Or what not, (all) are alike culpable. & shall be damned for such evil practices; & if you... yourselves... adhere to any thing of the kind you, also shall be damned."

The movie fails to account for the fact that among the thousands of attendees at the conference held on August 8, 1844, not one recorded anything like a transfiguration miracle suggesting that Brigham Young had taken on the appearance and voice of Joseph. Accounts of Brigham's mythical transfiguration didn't emerge for years after the Latter-day Saints left Nauvoo, and some of these later "reminiscences" of this purported transfiguration were offered by people who weren't even in Nauvoo when the conference took place. The transfiguration is a fairy tale, but this movie portrays it as if it were a matter of fact.

The movie also fails to account for the fact that there is zero contemporaneous support for the so-called "Last Charge" meeting of March 26, 1844. The Council of Fifty (not the Quorum of the Twelve, many of whom were traveling at the time) met that day, and the meeting minutes and respective participants' journal entries describe nothing that remotely suggests that Joseph commissioned the Twelve to lead the Church after him. In the first place, such an event would completely fly in the face of Joseph's repeated instruction that the Twelve had no stewardship or authority over the existing units of the Church--a teaching that is well-documented in the various records of the history of the Church. For example, "President Joseph Smith then stated that the Twelve will have no right to go into Zion, or any of its stakes, and there undertake to regulate the affairs thereof, where there is a standing high council" (History of the Church, Vol 2, p. 220). Nevertheless, sometime after Joseph was murdered, Orson Hyde drafted the document-- "Declaration of the Twelve Apostles"--on which the validity of the alleged "Last Charge" meeting hinges--but this document was completely rejected by the Council of Fifty, including by Brigham Young and other apostles who were part of that council. The document never garnered any signatories or support, even among those who would later claim the leadership of the Church. Orson Pratt (another one of the apostles) rebuked Hyde for his blatant fabrication, reminding Hyde that he hadn't even been present during the meetings of March 26. Even the most highly regarded historical scholars in the Church acknowledge the illegitimacy of Hyde's fabricated document and the dearth of contemporaneous evidence of the "Last Charge" meeting. This mythical meeting, just like Brigham Young's supposed transfiguration, is a fairy tale--yet this film portrays it as if it were factual.

Lastly, the movie takes for granted the trustworthiness of the two main eyewitness accounts of the martyrdom--those of Willard Richards and John Taylor. The movie fails to account for the egregious inconsistencies between these two accounts, and their misalignment with the forensic evidence surrounding the events. It fails to account for the fact that John Taylor didn't publish his account of the martyrdom until 10 years after the events, and just weeks after Willard Richards died (ostensibly so that Willard couldn't refute John's contradictory claims). The movie fails to account for the fact that there is no evidence of musket fire on the façade of the jail, within the jail, or on any of the three victims (Joseph, Hyrum, and John). The movie fails to account for the fact that the bullet holes in Hyrum's chin and nose clearly resulted from a single shot (there are no exit wounds on the top or the back of his skull), and that the chin wound was clearly where the bullet struck him--in other words, Hyrum was shot by someone who pointed the (small caliber) firearm directly at his chin. The movie draws on inconsistent accounts of two men who clearly had motive to deceive the people about their experiences in the jail.

There's so much more that could be said about this movie's belligerent fraud, but I'll limit my review to these obvious examples.

Viewer beware.

The Good -- for all of its cult potential, and my goodness this film is filled with, the song playing through the end credits was haunting and beautiful.

The Bad -- this movie makes Witnesses look like Citizen Kane, despite having a 2 million dollar budget. It just goes to show that money can't salvage a dookie script.

The Ugly -- if you were on a small passenger plane flying over Delta, UT, Six Days might not be preferable to simply staring into your airsickness bag.

I know what you're thinking... 'Just tell us whether you liked it.' Consider this, the film is pure fiction. Almost everything on the screen never happened. Women didn't love the idea of polygamy, there was not transfiguration of Brigham Young and the truth is that Joseph Smith ordered the destruction of the printing press because it was going to publish the truth about Joseph Smith and his many wives.

There is absolutely no reason to see this movie unless you are a glutton for punishment or if you enjoy being gaslit for 2 hours.

In the film the martyrdom scene isn't too specific but because this film strives for historically accuracy I will critic it for it more harshly. They showed Joseph bolting out of the window in Carthage Jail and breaking the window. Eye witness testimony stated he crawled out of that small window with one leg, one arm, and his head out of the window before a great force flinging him out of the window as like a leap or push. Newspapers from that time also describe that the window section that lifts up was still present and was not knocked out by Joseph going out of the window. They don't address enough the placement of Hyrum in the room as he died with his back turned to the door facing the window as his head was 1 foot away from the north east corner of the room and blood splatter on his clothing suggest he died on his stomach. They don't address Willard Richards being behind Joseph when at the window and the mob not shooting Richards while he was in plain line of sight.

I was familiar with the history and came into the movie with a pro bias. The movie however was a disappointment. It's as if the director and writers couldn't decide which story to tell so they told too many. Within five minutes they covered twenty years of highlights from Brigham's life. This made for disjointed story telling. The maudlin acting particularly of the women who played Maryann and Emma diminished the strength of the women and the complexities of the times they lived in. While Emma acknowledged why there would be tensions in Missouri, the mob and Plant were depicted overly villainous.