"Most people," wrote Flannery O'Connor, "underestimate the cost of salvation."
Most people, perhaps, but not those who inhabit the movies of LDS filmmaker Richard Dutcher. Dutcher's characters wear the scars of salvation on their bodies and on their souls.
So it was in his film "God's Army." So it is in his new work, "God's Army II: States of Grace."
For several years, it seems, Dutcher has been searching for a secret recipe. He has wanted to make Mormon films that the world would embrace. His first film was a little too LDS for that. The world felt left out. His second film, "Brigham City," was too secular. The world was allowed too far in. But with "States of Grace," Dutcher, like Goldilocks, gets it just about right. He gives us a film that pits the Saints against the sins of society, then finds a way to transcend both. It's a film about deliverance.
I saw the film last week. I hope to see it again.
I like sitting in the dark and watching Richard Dutcher work.
"States of Grace" is again set in the LDS California mission field. It's probably no fluke the action takes place in Santa Monica. Santa Monica was the Catholic mother whose wayward son — Augustine — eventually found himself. She is the patron saint of mothers with troubled children.
As in the first "God's Army," Dutcher compresses two years' worth of missionary experiences into a few days, which might give the impression to some that an LDS mission is turmoil on wheels. But then such is the nature of art. Stephen King, after all, turned Maine into a hotbed of constant horror. But Maine is no worse for the wear. The best stories require such harrowing conflicts.
That means, of course, the faithful should brace themselves for some stark themes — murder and fornication, repentance and rebirth. Confessions abound. Dutcher apparently believes one can't soft-pedal sin without trivializing redemption. And I'm with him on that. To envision the highest highs, you must also see the lowest lows. Christ's stripes may be healing, but the world has a way of making us earn those stripes.
Some will say the barrage of bad behavior tars the image of the church and missionary work. But I know branch presidents who will see the film and think Richard Dutcher has been reading their mail. That bad things here aren't as important as what they lead to.
And that, I think, is the upshot of the film. Redemption is a deeply personal matter. Churches — LDS, Pentecostal, Baptist, Catholic — are not toll booths on the straight and narrow. They are body shops, where we hammer the dents out of our lives. Living is work, but redemption is always in the air.
The film ends with one of Dutcher's signature big finishes. A small corps of damaged souls surround a living Nativity, tearfully passing the Christ child to each other. And by that point, everybody in the theater will have felt something — hope, perhaps, or maybe sadness; grief, relief, resignation. It is not a film people can take or leave.
As for me, I felt gratitude — not just for the "pro job" of movie making — but for the over-arching message. It's a message I hear often, though never often enough. It is, I think, a message that shows up in all of Richard Dutcher's work — a message that stands worldly wisdom on its head.
Thanks to grace, Dutcher's films tell us, life is hard — and then you live.
E-mail: jerjohn@desnews.com