The third and as of now last film of the early history of the Church Of Christ Of Latter Day Saints that has inspired a nine series is in keeping with the good standard set by the first two. I don't have any fault with the quality of the work done in these films inspired by LDS novelist Gerald Lund and his fictional characters the Steed Family in whom we see the rough early days the Mormon Church had to endure.
My problem is that by now polygamy should have been part of the film. Can't escape that was part of the LDS tenet of faith and the film makers should have been honest about it. It's the underlying reason why so many outsiders don't like these people. Of course that was no excuse for the persecution that they endured.
Eric Johnson is the oldest Steed brother who as we know from the previous films is estranged from his family. Younger brother Alexander Carroll stole his girlfriend and newly formed LDS church has gradually converted almost the whole family. This mind you after family patriarch Sam Hennings has hired a couple of brothers in his first year after emigrating from Vermont to Palmyra, New York hired a couple of itinerant farm hands named Hyrum and Joseph Smith, little realizing that Joseph Smith was a young man who has claimed to be visited by angels of God who told him to establish a new church. One way or another Smith's vision has affected all in the Steed Family for three books and films now. Smith is once again played by Jonathan Scarfe.
While on business in Savannah, Johnson acquires a new wife and comes back to Missouri. He doesn't tell her all about his past and his unyielding hatred of the LDS church which he sees as the root of all his personal problems. But when the Governor of Missouri essentially signs a shoot on sight order for Mormons who venture from what you could call an assigned ghetto, things come to a head for the Steeds and the Mormons.
Few enough people know about Lilburn Boggs who was Governor of Missouri who signed that order which was nothing less than genocide. A not very proud chapter in American history. After his term as governor was finished, Boggs was almost assassinated by persons unknown. Suspicion pointed at Porter Rockwell who was not the most even tempered of men. Rockwell is not in the picture yet as far as the LDS church is concerned. He was never convicted of the crime of putting four bullets into Boggs who miraculously lived. Apparently there was a list of people as large as the Salt Lake City phone book of today who would like to have done the job and not all of them Mormons.
The church itself is going through crisis and in this film that is most definitely related to what was going on at the time. Joseph Smith decides to charter a bank and it fails as many banks in the years of 1837-38 did in the USA. Andrew Jackson did not recharter the Bank of the United States and when it went out of business many wildcat banks sprung up overnight and just as many failed. Smith's bank was far from the only one. It was the Panic of 1837 and one of the major depressions in American history. The film also makes reference to the fact that banks could issue their own currency. Our American currency system did not get its start until the Civil War under Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase.
Sooner or later if additional films are made they'll have to come to grips with the polygamy issue. But for what it is and is trying to say, The Work And The Glory: A House Divided is a fine bit of cinema.
