Since A study in red, the first adventure of Sherlock Holmes, published in 1887, partly located in the Utah desert, Mormonism occupies a unique place in the Western imagination. The history of the religion founded by Joseph Smith (1805-1844) inspires a fascination (essentially for polygamy, which the Mormons advocated, before renouncing it, see the series Big Love, from 2006 to 2011), mixed with repulsion (The Executioner’s Song, by Norman Mailer, published in 1979) or of derision (the musical The Book of Mormonauthors of South Park, created in 2011).
The rationale for By order of God, a seven-episode miniseries from Disney + (online since July 27), is to confront these fantasies with a double reality, that of the Church when, in the 1980s, it was shaken by a news item atrocious, and that of the tormented history of its founding and establishment in the territory of Utah. Series creator, screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (Harvey Milk, in 2008, J. Edgarin 2011), relied on the work of Jon Krakauer By order of God (Presses de la cité, 2003), which recounts the double murder committed in 1984 by the brothers Dan and Ron Lafferty, scion of a prominent Mormon family, in the name of principles enacted by the founders of their faith.
Ultra-sectarian drift
The news item is deciphered in the dark light of the past, producing a violent spectacle populated by disturbing or pitiful characters, in the forefront of which the young Mormon investigator played by Andrew Garfield, who sees the foundations of his existence upset by his discoveries.
The series demands constant attention. In return, she offers a tragic and rigorous vision of an essential part of American history.
By order of God is not entertainment, even if Dustin Lance Black knows the rules of Hollywood grammar like the back of his hand. The series demands constant attention — especially from audiences unfamiliar with the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In return, it offers a tragic and rigorous vision of an essential part of American history.
Jon Krakauer’s book detailed the 1984 murder of Brenda Lafferty and her baby, Erica, by her brothers-in-law, Dan and Ron Lafferty. To the meticulous account of the ultra-sectarian drift which led to this crime, Dustin Lance Black added two fictitious characters, a duo of police officers, made up of Jebediah Pyre (Andrew Garfield), pious Mormon, good husband, good father and good son , and Bill Taba (Gil Birmingham, who can be seen, at the moment, in the role of Thomas Rainwater in the series Yellowstoneon Salto), from the Paiute Amerindian community, which the Mormons despoiled upon their arrival in Utah.
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