Quick! Can you name the last Mollywood film you saw in theatres?
It’s alright if you haven’t heard the term before. Mormon, Mollywood or LDS cinema, hasn’t exactly made a splash outside of Utah. Come to think of it, its debatable whether it has made enough of a splash in Utah to merit its own moniker.
With his gritty, shaky first film, director Garrett Batty attempts to bring Mormon values into the mainstream.
“The Saratov Approach” tells the story of two Mormons captured and held for ransom in Saratov, Russia. But at the film’s close, it remains unclear how those values differ from the Hollywood norm.
To the movie’s credit, Batty saves the bulk of the feel-good Christian message audiences love to weep at for the end of his thriller. Only after a substantial amount of pain and some excellent nail-biters do we get the ending we had hoped — and always sort of known — would come.
In 1998, 20-year-old missionaries Elder Andrew Lee Propst and Elder Travis Robert Tuttle knocked on the door of a Russian man who had told them days earlier he was interested in a teaching session.
The two arrived at the apartment and were immediately beat with metal batons and spirited to a jerry-rigged shack somewhere in the tundra, where they were told that they would both be killed unless the Church of Latter Day Saints paid a $300,000 ransom.
After five days and still no money, Tuttle and Propst were blindfolded, driven to an isolated location, dumped out of the car and told that they were free to go.
Corbin Alred and Maclain Nelson — playing Propst and Tuttle, respectively — do a fine job filling those days before the amazing release with a blend of tears, stoicism, banter and plans of escape.
Nonetheless, there doesn’t seem to be much more character to be developed beyond that of the terrified and, eventually, complacent victim.
The film’s dramatic fuel relies upon the horror of capturing religious altruists who were only kids — kids that had refused scholarships, women and coffee in order to teach the Word of God. Such is the sobering undercurrent of the film, made all the more heartbreaking by the fact that Nikolai, one of the two captors, was a 19-year-old mechanic who needed the money to pay for his future child.
“Why did this happen to me?” he sobs to his prisoners in the film’s most striking scene, rendering him instantly more human than the two saintly faces — already prepared to accept death — that stare back at him.
There’s a considerable deal to be said about Nikolai and even more to be said for the ringleader of the escapade, the wild-haired Sergei (Alex Veadov).
Unfortunately, long scenes of the victims’ weeping families and news broadcasts consume much of the screen time. The other actors have to make due with what whatever character they can scrape up off the ground — an old navy tattoo for Sergei, basketball banter for Nikolai.
“The Saratov Approach” stresses faith above all else and never allows itself to get so violent that audiences really believe the dark ending it sets itself up for.
Even so, when the ending does come, one gets the impression that the audience is meant to buy into the miracle — two saints whose brush with the devil resulted in strengthened conviction.
This is not exactly a weakness — it is a religious-based movie after all — but it eschews much of the real drama.
It could have been just as compelling to learn why the two captors chose to release their victims, knowing very well that they would be caught and sentenced. Or equally palatable to see God’s forgiveness in the lives of those who were not close to Him.
These nuts may be too big for one small industry to crack. At the very least, Batty has done more than Hollywood in bringing them to our attention.
It’s alright if you haven’t heard the term before. Mormon, Mollywood or LDS cinema, hasn’t exactly made a splash outside of Utah. Come to think of it, its debatable whether it has made enough of a splash in Utah to merit its own moniker.
With his gritty, shaky first film, director Garrett Batty attempts to bring Mormon values into the mainstream.
“The Saratov Approach” tells the story of two Mormons captured and held for ransom in Saratov, Russia. But at the film’s close, it remains unclear how those values differ from the Hollywood norm.
To the movie’s credit, Batty saves the bulk of the feel-good Christian message audiences love to weep at for the end of his thriller. Only after a substantial amount of pain and some excellent nail-biters do we get the ending we had hoped — and always sort of known — would come.
In 1998, 20-year-old missionaries Elder Andrew Lee Propst and Elder Travis Robert Tuttle knocked on the door of a Russian man who had told them days earlier he was interested in a teaching session.
The two arrived at the apartment and were immediately beat with metal batons and spirited to a jerry-rigged shack somewhere in the tundra, where they were told that they would both be killed unless the Church of Latter Day Saints paid a $300,000 ransom.
After five days and still no money, Tuttle and Propst were blindfolded, driven to an isolated location, dumped out of the car and told that they were free to go.
Corbin Alred and Maclain Nelson — playing Propst and Tuttle, respectively — do a fine job filling those days before the amazing release with a blend of tears, stoicism, banter and plans of escape.
Nonetheless, there doesn’t seem to be much more character to be developed beyond that of the terrified and, eventually, complacent victim.
The film’s dramatic fuel relies upon the horror of capturing religious altruists who were only kids — kids that had refused scholarships, women and coffee in order to teach the Word of God. Such is the sobering undercurrent of the film, made all the more heartbreaking by the fact that Nikolai, one of the two captors, was a 19-year-old mechanic who needed the money to pay for his future child.
“Why did this happen to me?” he sobs to his prisoners in the film’s most striking scene, rendering him instantly more human than the two saintly faces — already prepared to accept death — that stare back at him.
There’s a considerable deal to be said about Nikolai and even more to be said for the ringleader of the escapade, the wild-haired Sergei (Alex Veadov).
Unfortunately, long scenes of the victims’ weeping families and news broadcasts consume much of the screen time. The other actors have to make due with what whatever character they can scrape up off the ground — an old navy tattoo for Sergei, basketball banter for Nikolai.
“The Saratov Approach” stresses faith above all else and never allows itself to get so violent that audiences really believe the dark ending it sets itself up for.
Even so, when the ending does come, one gets the impression that the audience is meant to buy into the miracle — two saints whose brush with the devil resulted in strengthened conviction.
This is not exactly a weakness — it is a religious-based movie after all — but it eschews much of the real drama.
It could have been just as compelling to learn why the two captors chose to release their victims, knowing very well that they would be caught and sentenced. Or equally palatable to see God’s forgiveness in the lives of those who were not close to Him.
These nuts may be too big for one small industry to crack. At the very least, Batty has done more than Hollywood in bringing them to our attention.
