H8

Continuing the stream of documentary films that Netflix has been recommending to me, I recently watched "8: The Mormon Proposition." It's a 75 minute look at California's notorious Proposition 8, from the 2008 election, to ban gay marriage just months after a state court had ruled that they were legal. The film focuses on the efforts of the Mormon church to funnel substantial amounts of money into the state to campaign (successfully) for the passage of the proposition.

There's an odd little catch-22 at work in this film. It was not widely known at the time of the election just how involved the Mormon church was in promoting Proposition 8. And yet, in conducting interviews for the making of this documentary, the filmmakers stumbled onto some rather incendiary comments that gained a fair amount of news coverage. As a result, the very "exposé" purpose of the documentary is almost undermined and rendered unnecessary by the time it could actually be seen.

Perhaps more importantly, I'm not really sure the involvement of the Mormon church in pushing the passage of Proposition 8 is really even The Point that should be made here. Yes, there are some potential legal issues surrounding a church's tax exempt status in the U.S. if they engage in too much political activity. But the film makes its entire meal out of this issue. However deserving a target the church ends up looking, wouldn't a more worthy documentary message have been "gay marriage should be okay" rather than "Mormon church bad?"

Now make no mistake, the film uses the words of the church's own elders to present the case against them. This is hardly a "hatchet job." But I do feel a little bit like it's trying to take gay people out of the cross hairs of public opinion by substituting Mormon leaders in their place. I just hope that's not the most compelling case that could be made on the subject.

I suppose this leads to another catch-22 I often find myself asking of documentaries. Is a documentary film capable of swaying the opinion of a person from one side of an issue like this to another? If it is, then is it even conceivable that the sort of person who needs to see the film ever actually would? In any case, this is not that film. While it does spend some time providing examples of lives destroyed by the passage of the proposition, the main thrust of the film is "those awful Mormon elders."

The bottom line is this -- it's not a bad movie, but it does betray the (justifiable) rage of the people who made it, and thus isn't as good or compelling as it could be. I rate it a B-. For a far more skillful take on "gays vs. religion," I'd recommend For the Bible Tells Me So.