Under The Banner Of Heaven: "Our faith breeds dangerous men"
Plus Marilyn Monroe and Amy Ryan
the true crime that's worth your time
It’s time to vote for the May 2022 bonus-review topic! A reminder: anyone can vote for what I review, but only paid subscribers will get to read it. And a paid sub gets you nearly three years of our archive, so maybe now’s the time?
Either way, the five hopefuls this month include a Swedish series, a couple of big-name podcasts, and a 1983 TV movie starring James Spader and Eric Stoltz. No losers here, so pick me a good one! (Note: you can vote for multiple items, so if you can’t narrow it down, no worries.) — SDB
And now, a few weird bits and bobs clattering around my inbox…
I want to decry the tastelessness of “May-hem” in this Investigation Discovery PR blast…but it’s kind of clever? Of course, it’s shilling the return of four “fan-favorite” series to the network starting next week, including klassy programming like Crimes Gone Viral and Murder in the Heartland, but — “May-hem” is pretty good.
Not exactly true crime, but I did find it interesting that this service-y piece on gaslighting phrases to watch out for came from Good Housekeeping. Gaslighting is a not-as-dark way of describing emotional coercive-control behavior, a hallmark of intimate-partner abuse, which is a crime, so good for GH for highlighting it. (Less good: the algo ads trying to sell me Pumas in between every list item, but what can you do.)
We talked about We Own This City, a true story of police corruption from David Simon and George Pelecanos, this week on Extra Hot Great. I also talked a little more with the panelists about Captive Audience and Gaslit.
And finally, the latest Netflix “documentary you might like” that I almost certainly will not: The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes. My response upon receiving this email update was something along the lines of “sometimes tapes go unheard for a reason,” and Ben Kenigsberg’s review for the Times suggests I had the right instinct. — SDB
I’ve had a BET-CRP backlog stacking up for a minute here, so let’s whittle it down by tackling Amy Ryan. (Not sure what the BET-CRP is? Ecce the parameters!) My prediction, before going through Ryan’s 71 credits, is that it’s around 12%. It feels to me like she’s got a few high-value roles that will weight the percentages. Let’s find out!
Capote (2005) // …Oof, this might end up in single digits after all if the first pertinent property doesn’t show up until 15 years into Ryan’s career. Too, I don’t quite know how to score this; she’s not a name figure in the case, but she’s a name figure’s wife, so does she get a single point instead of two, or none? And is this property considered a hall-of-famer in the genre? I’d love to hear your arguments on all of that stuff; I will say no to the latter, split the difference on the former, and net her out at 2
Law & Order (2006) // Ryan appeared in two L&O: Mothership episodes 13 years apart, and according to the show’s wiki, both — 1993’s “Jurisdiction” and 2006’s “Family Friend” — are ripped from the headlines of real cases, so I’ll give her two points, one for each. Fans of the show might argue that “Jurisdiction” is a hall-of-famer — it’s the one where Michael Badalucco kills nurses to show he’s smart enough to do so; Dan Hedaya also stars — but while I remembered it immediately, I still don’t think it’s in the top ten for that franchise, so no points there. Ryan has a larger role in “Family Friend” but that case isn’t one I remember at all; ditto the episode, so we remain at 2
Chicago 10 (2007) // A documentary about the Chicago 8 (by the guy who directed the 30 For 30 on OJ, “June 17, 1994”); Ryan voices Mrs. Abbie Hoffman. I may seek it out based on the Brett Morgen factor, but it’s still just 1
Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2008) // Again, two episodes, one in ’03 and another five years later; both appear to come from major cases (Leona Helmsley and Lisa Nowak). No awards attention and I don’t think either of the roles rises to the level of “name figure,” so: 2
Changeling (2008) // It’s a real case, but Ryan doesn’t play a name figure in it; 1
Devil’s Knot (2013) // Kind of amazing that a cast this high-profile, directed by Atom Egoyan, barely made a dent, but: 1
Bridge of Spies (2015) // Depends on whether you consider espionage “true crime,” but let’s go with it, especially since I couldn’t justify giving her points for The Wire: 1
The Infiltrator (2016) // I recognized this immediately because I carry Robert Mazur’s book at Exhibit B., and every time I see it, I’m like, wait, Richard Masur wrote a crime book? Why do I stock this? …oh, right. Masur doesn’t play Mazur in the film, either (it’s Bryan Cranston), and Ryan only gets 1
Worth (2020) // A 9/11 “reparations” movie that purports to be a true story, but I wouldn’t say it has name figures (or much name recognition despite a serious cast): 1
Lost Girls (2020) // This is probably the biggie, and the name-figure line item is arguable, but I’m including it: 3
Yes, I was tempted to find a way to include Only Murders In The Building, but I resisted, leaving Ryan with 14 points. Dividing 14 by 71 gives us…whoa, a 19.78 BET-CRP — much higher than I’d anticipated. Yes, the L&O scoring is highly arguable, but even if you throw out those points, it’s still 14 percent.
(Got a Bet-Crap you want me to run? Let me know! Want to do it yourself? I’ll let you know that we pay contributors. But that also obliges me to remind you that your paid subscriptions really help with that, so here’s me, doing that and thanking you for listening.) — SDB
The crime
The gory murder of Brenda Lafferty and her infant daughter Erica in 1984 by her fundamentalist brothers-in-law.
The story
Jon Krakauer investigated that murder case, nested within an investigation of the history of the LDS church, in 2003’s Under The Banner Of Heaven — an outstanding book that I remember tearing through in a day and a half. The only other thing I really remember about the case, though, is one of the loons accused of murdering Brenda and Erica mounting a defense to the effect that the angel Moroni possessed him anally; I looked forward to seeing how Hulu’s six-part prestige mini from Dustin Lance Black (Big Love, Milk) would adapt material that I thought well of, but wouldn’t mind a refresher on.
One thing I didn’t look forward to without qualifications is the…Dustin Lance Blackness of it all. Black was raised in LDS, and I think you need that ear for certain projects involving crimes within that faith community, but Black is also responsible for the laughably bad J. Edgar.
I have more compassion now for the task Black set himself with that bio-pic than I did at the time, because it’s an ambitious failure, but there’s nothing unambitious about Under The Banner in breadth, and before watching the first ep, I had concerns about Black’s ability to collage Mormon history and beliefs, the peculiar challenges of investigating a “faith-based” crime from in- or outside of that faith, et cetera and so on. After watching that first ep, I wouldn’t say that I feel more confident in that regard — Under The Banner’s movement between 1980s and nineteenth-century timelines isn’t as nimble as the medium needs — but I think the series is still worth a look, because the casting and acting expiate a lot of the script’s sins.
Let’s start with Andrew Garfield, who’s playing a Mormon detective named Jeb Pyre. Richard Lawson’s review for Vanity Fair notes that that character’s personal-life struggles bog down the show’s flow somewhat, and based on the last scene of the premiere — Pyre in the shower with his wife (Adelaide Clemens), intoning a prose poem about bones working their way out of their desert graves in a way exactly zero Utahn police have ever done — I suspect he’s right. But Garfield allllmost sells it.
Garfield also has better control of the accent than many in the crown-territories-heavy cast (Sam Worthington as Ron Lafferty is immediately in trouble in that regard), and does a remarkable job with a scene in the early going that true-crime consumers have seen hundreds of times, the cop horrified by a grisly crime scene involving a child. Yes, the character is Taking! It! Personally!, but it’s well and elliptically shot here, and Garfield’s barely audible, inadvertent whimper when he pushes the bloody door open with his ballpoint pen is affecting.
Pairing him with Clemens may make the parallel-struggle stuff go down easier; she has solid experience in the “conservative but determined wife trying to solve her fraying husband for X” department from her time on Rectify. (Gil Birmingham as Pyre’s partner, Bill Taba, brings just the right acidic impatience to the job of receiving church-history exposition on the audience’s behalf.)
And Wyatt Russell is amazing. The same easy-come, curious way Russell brought to his role on Lodge 49 has soured here, into a volatile autodidact’s “I did my own research” proselytizing. In Lodge 49, that portrayal of a fluid psyche is charming; in Under The Banner, it’s dangerous instability, and Russell gets that across by the end of his first scene. By the end of his last scene in the premiere, the two roles have begun a conversation with each other about two different reads on the modern American west, and that dialogue isn’t necessary for the Dan Lafferty character to succeed, but is still fascinating.
Under The Banner is only six episodes, so while I haven’t seen past the first one, I’ll recommend it anyway. The book is probably your best qualitative bet, but at this point, it faces one of the same challenges the miniseries does, namely that, by now, we’ve consumed enough other material about Mormon-adjacent cases — Warren Jeffs; the Hofmann forgeries and bombings — that we can’t come to the historical part of the story “fresh.” I don’t know that it’s possible to adapt the book entire and maintain the elegant combination of investigation and history, but as a thought experiment on casting, true-crime narrative, and how what we already know illuminates what we see onscreen, it’s a pleasure to engage with. — SDB
Friday on Best Evidence: It’s the last Best Evidence day of the month, and you know what that means: It’s Eve’s monthly budget doc clean-out issue!
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