Brigham City
review by Gregory Avery, 18 May 2001

Wes Clayton, the character played by Richard Dutcher in Brigham City, is the sheriff in the small, close-knit, tranquil Utah town of Brigham, where most of the residents are L.D.S., they routinely address each other as "Brother" and "Sister" rather than "Mister" or "Missus," and there is a feeling of community that not only provides a sense of respite but also of being away from the mainstream, where the daily news carries a litany of crimes being perpetrated large and small. Just about the only dispute in town seems to be between those who want to listen to country music and those who don't. (Rap and rave have apparently not yet made an inroad, there.)

Wes is not only the town sheriff, but he is also a bishop for one of the local Latter Day Saints wards, making it not uncommon for citizens who are also church members to approach him at the office regarding urgent matters which are, as Wes terms them, of a "spiritual" rather than "temporal" nature. (Wes tries to discourage this, for the simple reason that he does not want to use up time when he's being paid to act as sheriff, but he will make exceptions.) He also seems to have found an equilibrium for these two responsibilities, but at a cost. His careful, even courtly, demeanor is partly the result of his suffering a great tragedy, involving the loss of his wife and son, and he has one leg in a brace as a memento of the calamity.

When a murder victim turns up at, appropriately, the outskirts of Brigham, Wes wants to contain the situation and handle it within the town's jurisdiction, but circumstances dictate the involvement of F.B.I. agents from outside. When a second body turns up -- right after the town stages its 138th anniversary celebration -- news crews materialize, and the mediaspeak term "serial killer" is invoked. Asked if there was ever a murder in the town of Brigham before, Wes replies, curtly, unhesitatingly, and even resentfully, "Never."

While Brigham City functions on one level as a murder mystery, it also serves as a depiction of what happens when a community finds itself in an inexorable situation of disruption and change. Fliers are issued from the police station to residents: Wes, in his capacity as bishop, calls upon the young boys who are Aaronic Priesthood holders in his ward to distribute them, somewhat like Brigham's own version of the Baker Street Irregulars. People start drawing the blinds on the windows facing each other's houses. Residents become openly emotional, and those who look like they aren't acting emotional enough over what has happened are looked at askance.

When a young girl disappears and it is feared that she may become the next murder victim, door-to-door searches are conducted by the men in the community, in pairs: Wes lays down specific instructions, ranging from being as polite as possible about the business at hand to making sure that they do not split-up from each other at any time. For those who had served on missions for the Church and clocked some hours knocking on doors, Wes reassures them that this will simply be just like "in the old days."

The story plants its share of red herrings, and it has one scene with a "jump" in it that I haven't seen since whatever the last numeric installment of Scream was. (The filmmakers apparently just could not resist the urge.) One of the residents turns out to have a very good reason, indeed, for not wanting to have his residence searched: he has a secret, but it turns out to be a very fallible one, a frailty rather than a crime, but the film conveys a full sense of what the character would feel once other people in the community found out about him, and how they would never look at him in the same way again.

Dutcher, who also wrote and directed the film, has earlier voiced his commitment to making films which would involve L.D.S. aspects of life, and Brigham City includes one scene where, as one of the late-night sessions at the police station finally winds down and the fate of the missing girl is still up in the air, last-minute checks are made and someone suggests that, before they leave, a moment of prayer might not be entirely out of order. Lead by Peg (Carrie Morgan), the engagingly spunky woman who works as secretary at the station, we steady ourselves for a moment of respectful piety and instead see how this provides a way where the people involved, taxed to their endurance, are able to draw together, re-forge their commitment and unity to the task at hand, and express some deep emotion and concern that they might have otherwise kept locked-up inside.

Morgan's performance (she introduces the debate over the pros and cons of country music in the film) is one of several fine ones in the picture, which has been splendidly photographed, against backgrounds of greens, oranges, and golds, by cinematographer Ken Glassing. Matthew A. Brown, the untried missionary who was the central character in Dutcher's last film, God's Army, shows considerable range here as Wes' deputy Terry, who lives in town with a wife and child (and another on the way), but nonetheless has moments where he chomps at the bit to find out what's going on out there in the teeming world beyond. Wilford Brimley plays Stu, the town's former sheriff who still stops in to help out at the station every day, and he turns out to be wonderful, providing the film with some, if not exactly blasts, than good gusty expulsions of irascible air. (One surprising aspect about the film: the moments of humor that occur without throwing the film as a whole off-kilter.) And Tayva Patch plays the F.B.I. agent, Meredith, who stays in Brigham until the investigation is concluded. She and Wes could very easily have been thrown together during the course of events to become a romantic duo. Instead, there is an unspoken acknowledgment between the two that they could take the first tentative steps towards having a relationship if they wanted to, but it is never forced, and it is never agonized over. It lends the film a very welcome air of subtlety.

As a performer, Dutcher has become an actor who can communicate a great deal while doing very little. Wes emerges as a man who does not go in for expressions of high emotion: he only raises his voice a couple of times during the story, even with the specter of the town that has come to form the fulcrum of his life unraveling around him, and even then it is only briefly. When Wes says that a murder has "never" occurred in Brigham, it is because that is how he wants to see the town: as has been shown over the last century alone, horrors can occur just about anywhere, under any circumstances. What's remarkable about Wes is how he never loses his capacity to feel, especially towards others -- his character could have easily become embittered or closed-off. Wes does not seem to want to become like that because it would be a way for the brutality that he so disdains in the "outside" world to gain a foothold within himself and claim a victory. The weariness and sorrow that seem to limb his eyes and features betray what must be an ongoing internal struggle, day by day. One of the most affecting moments I've seen in any film this year has to do with when Wes is shown going through his daily routine of placing one fresh-picked flower at the site where his wife and son are buried. It's not just the visit or gesture that makes the scene, but the moment when Wes, off-handedly, sweeps clear with one hand any dirt or debris that has collected at the base of the markers.

The killer is, indeed, apprehended by the end of Brigham City (and, not to fear, I would be loathe to reveal who it is, here, but I would have liked to have been in the audience during the film's premiere showing: they must have let out quite a yelp). But at the same time a considerable dilemma is created. Wes has carried out his duty as a law enforcer, but can he continue to function as a spiritual leader? The question is answered in a closing sequence which is, in a word or two, absolutely extraordinary, and played out with almost no spoken dialogue, showing how Wes acknowledges his regret, and how the community, which is composed of both his friends and the people to whom he is supposed to be serving as bishop, reforms and regroups once more. It is the kind of scene which could hold its own against two others, Bibi Andersson's monologue in Ingmar Bergman's Persona, and the breathtaking closing scene in Terence Davies' The Long Day Closes: scenes in which, once you start watching them, you get an idea of what it is that they are trying to accomplish, and while you're watching to see if the scenes can possibly sustain themselves well enough accomplish what they have set out to do, the anticipation heightens the dramatic and emotional effect. (And, believe me, this is a comparison that I do not make lightly.)

Brigham City is a picture that is set within an L.D.S. community and whose ideas are essentially universal, so it has the advantage of being a film that is both dramatically engaging and has something on its mind. Just this past week, at the annual Cannes festival, Jean-Luc Godard, in person and in his new film, announced his disgust with the lack of current films that traffic in any genuine ideas of their own. ("No wonder you need other people's stories," two characters in Godard's Éloge de l'Amour reportedly tell some American producers who are trying to buy the rights to a true story about French resistance fighters, "You don't have any of your own.") Dutcher being mentioned in the same breath as Bergman, Terence Davies, and Godard? He may very well come over and whack me on the back of the head for that, but I don't care. Just as long as he keeps making movies.

And, oh, yeah, the guy with the big nose and the bandanna who plays McKay, the proprietor of the only bar in Brigham, what's his name, Tim Hansen, that's it, he's not too bad. We miss you tremendously, Timmy.

Brigham City is a picture that is set within an L.D.S. community and whose ideas are essentially universal, so it has the advantage of being a film which is both dramatically engaging and has something on its mind. Just this past week, at the annual Cannes festival, Jean-Luc Godard, in person and in his new film, espoused his deplorance over the lack of current films which traffic in any genuine ideas of their own. ("No wonder you need other people's stories," two characters in Godard's "Éloge de l'Amour" reportedly tell some American producers who are trying to buy the rights to a true story about French resistance fighters, "you don't have any of your own.") Dutcher being mentioned in the same breath as Bergman, Terence Davies, and Godard? He may very well come over and whack me on the back of the head for that, but I don't care. Just as long as he keeps making movies which are as insightful, evocative, engaging (and, also, entertaining) as this one.

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