Blog From The Bench

A few months ago I had a pretty deep conversation with a friend and fellow Judge George Hatch about homosexuality and religion, and he pointed me to a highly personal review he had written about the film LATTER DAYS for this site. I had remembered seeing the previews for the film upon its release, but had written it off as one of the gay-themed fluff films that blow through San Diego theatres on occasion. According to his review, however, LATTER DAYS didn't fit into this category, but was in reality a very honest and probing look at hypocrisy and guilt within the confines of organized religion. It turns out he was right on the money.

LATTER DAYS is basically a story about Aaron (Steve Sandvoss), a young Mormon guy who leaves his native Idaho for LA to start his two year missionary requirement (of which I am well acquainted- I currently have several cousins in various parts of the world doing the same thing). While there, his gay neighbor Christian (Wes Ramsey) exposes the deep, dark secret he has been trying to suppress and ignore his whole life: his homosexual tendencies. When the two are caught sharing a kiss in a moment of crisis Aaron is immediately sent back home, with the excommunication and "curing" process immediately begun.

I was very interested in the topic of this film, for even though I am not Mormon (thank god), I come from a very conservative religious background (as I alude to in my bio), and as I have gotten older I have really had to question these moral and religious values, especially as my political and social beliefs seem to be increasingly at odds with what are supposed to be my religious values. For that reason LATTER DAYS very much appealed to me, as I'm always interested in looking at religion from perspectives that are not exactly my own but that contain some similarities.

What ultimately elevates this film far above other treatments of this type of material is the overall fairness extended to both sides of the issue. The story behind the creation of LATTER DAYS is that writer/director C. Jay Cox is a gay man that was born and raised in the Mormon Church, and he wondered what an earlier version of himself (embodied in Aaron) would do if he came into contact with the later (and current) version of himself (seen in Christian, which is a very interesting name choice). This means that Cox has experience on both sides of the fence, and the film is greatly enhanced because of it. It would have been extremely easy for Cox to vilify the Mormon Church in this situation, but overall he refrains from doing so. Though he refuses to shy away from the despicable behavior directed towards the character of Aaron, particularly in a horrific montage depicting the "curing process" and in the emotional isolation Aaron must endure from his ashamed parents, he overall presents these people as being so wrapped up and blinded in their religious beliefs that they are to be pitied more than hated.

It needs to be stated that LATTER DAYS is also quite accomplished in a technical sense and is in no way a Z-grade film, as seems to be the general case with many gay-themed films. The acting is overall excellent, filled with interesting and provocative supporting characters (played with particular skill from the likes of Jacqueline Bisset (still a fox after all these years), Mary Kay Place and Rebekah Johnson). But, of course, it is the two leads that ultimately sell the film, and both are at their best during the big sex scene, which turns a very deep and soul-searching sequence instead of just an opportunity to display a lot of chisled male flesh to the target audience. The production values and soundtrack is also quite good (the theme song "Windmills" by Toad the Wet Sprocket is terrific, by the way). By making sure LATTER DAYS is a quality production Cox & Co. have made it possible for LATTER DAYS to appeal to a much larger audience than just the LGBT community, which, in my opinion, is the way it should be.

So thanks George for recommending this film to me. I don't know if you thought I would actually bother to check it out, but I'm extremely glad I did.