Based on Jon Krakauer's 2003 true-crime book Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith — a book that juxtaposes the horrific, real-life murders of Brenda Lafferty and her infant daughter Erica against the violent origins of the Church of Latter-day Saints (the LDS Church). This 7-part limited series attempts to sew a thread between the 1984 murders and the violent beginnings of Mormonism in the United States. Under the Banner of Heaven has an ambitious aim.
This review contains minor spoilers for the series.
With Detective Jeb Pyre (Andrew Garfield), arriving at the scene of a horrific murder in 1984, Under the Banner of Heaven begins with an emotionally charged crime-scene in 1980s Utah. Though we're spared the sight of the bodies, series creator Dustin Lance Black and director David Mackenzie manage to create a deeply moving starting point to what will become a difficult, generational case — one that reaches far back into the past to the founding of the LDS Church.
It's particularly challenging for Mormon investigator Detective Pyre (pronounced Pie-ree), whose own beliefs are called into question when it becomes clear there is a sinister, religious motivation behind the killings. Inevitably, suspicion falls firstly on Brenda's husband Alan Lafferty (Billy Howle – who some may recognise from BBC's Chloe) and the extended Lafferty family that includes Sam (Rory Culkin), Dan (an eerie Wyatt Russell) and Ron (Sam Worthington).
The Lafferty family is fleshed out thanks to police interviews and the use of an alternate timeline, showing us the courtship of a young Alan and Brenda (Normal People's Daisy Edgar-Jones), who attempts to assimilate herself into a family known proudly as ‘the Kennedy's of Utah'. Headed by patriarch Ammon, the Lafferty family represent the shining ideals of the American dream. They are faithful and conservative, successful and yet outwardly humble.
Beneath this veneer there are simmering tensions, and with their father Ammon getting older, the fight for the head of the table brings out violent and misogynistic tendencies amongst the brothers. An insidious and destructive side to this idealistic religion is gradually revealed, one that parallels American libertarianism and the extremist right-wing factions that have come to plague American politics and culture. Here the Mormons are ‘American' with a capital ‘A'. Faithful, idealistic, spiritual, contradictory, violent, sexist. They are able to easily assimilate amongst everyday Americans and yet always remain just a few steps away from extremism. A frightening mix that feels all too familiar.
The thread that starts with Mormon founder Joseph Smith and the violent origins of Mormonism in the 1820s and 30s is stretched through to 1980s Utah in an effort to prove an inherent violence within Mormonism. But it's this series of flashbacks that weighs the series down, with wooden characters lifted lifelessly from the pages of history books and historical events brought limply to the screen.
Elsewhere, Daisy Edgar-Jones breathes life into victim Brenda Lafferty with effortless charm. It's heart-breaking to see a bright and promising young life slowly extinguished by the men around her, and it provides the series with a strong emotional connection to a crime we don't witness. Brenda is almost always pulled to what is ‘right', often against the doctrine of her own religion. This in turn puts her at odds with the extended Lafferty family and their whims — ideas which they see as instructions from God. Much of what the Lafferty men see as Heavenly instruction are merely just impulses spurred on by frustration and jealousy. The timeline of the Lafferty's collapse is a searing example of the way countless men have manipulated their own desires so as to have them conflated with the word of God.
Helping to peel apart this story in the ‘present day' are Andrew Garfield's Pyre and his Native American partner Detective Taba (played by Gil Birmingham). Fresh off a Golden Globe win and an Oscar nomination for Tick Tick…Boom, there's a quiet assurance to Garfield's acting here that's truly remarkable. Both Garfield and Birmingham are particularly strong as two detectives/friends struggling to get a hold of an infinitely complicated case. Much of that complication comes from the ways in which religion is so intertwined with the American social fabric. The Church looms menacingly over Pyre and the investigation, presented here more as a murky corporation, both corrupt and protectionist.
Detective Taba provides viewers with a much needed, non-Mormon eye. A man who is able to look back at the ‘history' presented by the Mormons around him and question its authenticity. A reminder of how history is so often shaped by a white, colonisers eye. Seen through Taba's eyes, the Church of Latter-Day Saints is one of contradictions and violence, and one that enables Brenda's killers.
This fundamental message runs through the series — that religion begets violence. But in its probing, Under the Banner of Heaven is at times a victim of its own ambition. By attempting to capture the grand theory of Krakauner's best seller, the series ultimately gives itself too much to do. In the swirl of moving parts, many of the series' deeper questions seem to get lost as it chases its conclusion. Its messiness should not detract however from what is an assured series (and one with some exquisite moments).
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