The murders that shook US Mormons
Early in the captivating series Under the Banner of Heaven, a former Mormon whose wife and baby have just been murdered directs suspicion at a fundamentalist cult, an offshoot of his one-time faith. “Our religion breeds dangerous men,” he tells Detective Jeb Pyre. The crime is real, chronicled in Jon Krakauer’s 2003 non-fiction bestseller of the same name. But in a brilliant stroke, the series’ creator, Dustin Lance Black (the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Milk), has invented the character of Pyre. Played with quiet substance by Andrew Garfield, Pyre is a mainstream Mormon who comes to question his own beliefs. This sympathetic hero allows the series to work beautifully as a murder mystery in the classic procedural style. And he is the perfect vehicle for the drama’s thoughtful exploration of the nexus of religious extremism, politics and violence.
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The series doesn’t alter the facts of the real-life crime. In 1984, Brenda Lafferty and her 15-month-old daughter were killed in their house in a suburb of Salt Lake City, Utah. Unlike the book, which tells us at the start who committed the murders, the series follows Pyre and his fictional partner, Bill Taba (Gil Birmingham), through the investigation, with all its clues and false starts.
David Mackenzie (Hell or High Water) directed the first two episodes, and creates a textured world, depicting Pyre’s life with his wife and two young daughters in a conservative, church-going community. When Pyre is called to the murder scene, we see blood flooding the floor of the kitchen where Brenda was killed. But all we see of the baby’s death is the agonised expression on Pyre’s face when he opens the nursery door. It’s all we need. Garfield’s sensitive performance is perfectly in tune with the series’ tone, which avoids any lurid exploitation of the shocking details of the case.
Suspicion soon turns to Brenda’s husband, Allen, and his large, close-knit Mormon family. The series deftly lets us know what we need to about Mormonism, also known as the Church of Latter-day Saints, and the local community. Taba, a Native American detective recently working in Las Vegas, is too neatly set up as the outsider who needs to hear what the audience does. “The Laffertys, they’re kind of like Utah Kennedys,” Pyre tells him. But Birmingham is so solid an actor that the device never becomes clumsy. And when Allen (a very convincing Billy Howle) tells Pyre about his loss of faith, he fills in more details. Brenda wanted a career as well as a family, which put her at odds with the Laffertys, who believe wives should stay home and remain subservient to their husbands.
Platform: Hulu
Number of episodes: Seven
Creator: Dustin Lance Black
Starring:
Andrew Garfield
Daisy Edgar-Jones
Gil Birmingham
Start date: 28 April
Allen’s account also leads to flashbacks of his life with Brenda – Daisy Edgar-Jones makes her a vivid presence in the series – and of his authoritarian father and five brothers. Sam Worthington is Ron, the overlooked son, who feels undervalued by his father. Wyatt Russell gives a dynamic performance as Dan, the golden boy, who is intense and volatile. Dan argues that God’s laws supersede the government’s, refusing to pay taxes or the licence fee for the family’s chiropractic practice. “Heavenly Father gave us our licence for free,” he says. As they become part of a fringe Mormon group, Ron and Dan become increasingly unhinged. As Pyre’s investigation goes on, he wonders how far his own Church might go to protect its reputation.
Black, who was raised Mormon, has long criticised Mormonism’s anti-gay stance. But the series is respectful of Pyre’s genuine faith, without going easy on his Church’s cultish outliers. That nuanced view is a corrective to the black-and-white views of Mormonism that have dominated culture, from the satiric Book of Mormon to the benign view of polygamy in the HBO series Big Love, as well as horrifying news reports about fundamentalists like Warren Jeffs, sentenced to prison for sexual assault on girls he called his wives.
The series runs into serious trouble when it tries to dramatise the roots of Mormon fundamentalism, though. Ron and Dan come to embrace what they call “the old ways”, and intermittently the series flashes back to the 19th Century in scenes that include Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, his wife Emma and Brigham Young, his successor as Church president. The idea is to depict the sources of beliefs no longer part of mainstream Mormonism, including polygamy and “blood atonement”, killing sinners to cleanse them. That creative strategy backfires completely, in distracting episodes that play like cheesy historical reenactments. There must have been a better way to show how faith can veer into fanaticism.
But there is so much more that makes the series compelling. Religious fundamentalism is part of our world, from the jihadists behind the 9/11 terror attacks to the political clout of Evangelical Christians. Under the Banner of Heaven adds a bracing perspective to that reality.
★★★★☆
Under the Banner of Heaven premieres in the US on 28 April on Hulu, and internationally on Disney+ – date to be confirmed.
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