Gladiator of Latter-Day Saints
DIRECTED BY DARIN SCOTT/2023
“A Herculean Production”… “An Intrinsic Value Film”… and “A Great Scott Production”… So read just some of the telling production company titles for The Oath– a film is written, produced, edited, partially scored, directed by and starring one Darin Scott. Does all that make one great…? (My early verdict: No). Whatever one’s verdict, any possible self-aggrandizing isn’t for any lack of trying.
Set circa 400 A.D. in the unsettled woods of what it calls “Ancient America”, The Oath makes good with lots of intense forest chasing, some chaste romance, some resonant tragedy, and an eventual dual to the death. The cinematography is plenty decent even as lousy costumes, the persistent wooded setting, and glaring lack of other people reveal big budgetary shortcomings. For what is obviously aspiring to be a sprawling period epic, that smarts.
What also smarts: The whispery flow of mystical gobbledygook that is all the hope viewers of The Oath have of narrative cohesion. Our hero, Moroni (Scott), lies in the tall grass all Terrence Malick-y, staring skyward as he feigns a crucifix pose and broadcasts his thoughts on the beauty of this oh-so-chosen land and the Divine Creator who made it all. But with all his other people killed or captured or gone or wherever, it’s up to this greying beefcake to immortalize their cultural knowledge.
He does so by etching his message from On High into a series of small golden plates and hiding them from the bad guys. At least I think that’s what’ve been happening. If you’ve seen the musical The Book of Mormon, the all-important gold plates should ring a bell. The absurd weirdness of it all, which Trey Parker and Matt Stone send up so cuttingly brilliantly, is trotted out here in complete, dead serious earnestness. It’s kind of unbelievable. No, scratch that- it’s insanely unbelievable. The best part: The plates are pages in a cute little 400 A.D. three-ring binder.
Also, even in its downplaying murkiness, it’s thematically unsettling. Even its subtly telegraphed patriarchal vibes. When the heroic, wizened Moroni addresses Bathsheba (Nora Dale), a self-assured female escapee of the evil King Aaron (Billy Zane, chewing whatever scenery there is), both occupy separate frames, positioned dead center. (George Miller would be proud). But where his shots are steadfastly locked down, hers are handheld- unsteady and shaky. It’s not that Moroni has nothing to learn from Bathsheba going forward, but yes, these visuals reflect a deep-seated patriarchal dynamic going forward. (“I learn, you teach”, she requests of him). (She also tells him, “You are boring. All your thinking…!”). As bland as Moroni and Bathsheba’s romantic relationship is, there’s something of a saving grace in the chemistry between Scott (aka Darin Southam, by the way) and Dale. Also, Karina Lombard is pretty good as a goth-y heavy.
Scott claims that it took thirteen hard years to get The Oath to the screen, which jibes in every way. Placing to the side that most any filmmaking is a nigh-impossible undertaking, the long origins of this project place its beginnings all the closer to Mel Gibson’s Braveheart (1995), or closer still to Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000). The Oath owes no small debt to those two historical actioners, for in many cases, it could be called the Mormon Braveheart/Gladiator– albeit with a very light, very tidy PG-13 rating. Violence is bloodless and infrequent, and always obscured in execution. Love scenes are zilch.
The Oath does what it can to sidestep any grotesque matter-of-fact racism that’s baked into the fundamental Mormon lore of the feuding white Nephites and the genocidal Lamanites, the latter peoples known from the Book of Mormon for their “skin of blackness“. (Yikes). Dodging such age-old baggage is hardly a cause for compliment. I confess I might not altogether understand The Oath such as it is. But it just makes not understanding it so easy…
One thing is certain- the time for this sort of thing has passed. Quasi-secularized religious epics, particularly those with obvious evangelical intentions, haven’t been on anyone’s watchlist for decades. The manly clinch-jawed Gladiator and Braveheart won their Oscars ages ago. Today, they wouldn’t. As for The Oath, the only gold it will ever claim are its own ridiculous inscribed plates.