Last night I watched a screening of "Get the Fire!: Mormon Missionaries Abroad," a documentary by Nancy DuPlessis. It was part of a series of films being shown at the Harvard Divinity School about coming of age and rites of passage in various world religions.

The movie follows three Utah boys as they serve their two-year missions in Munich, Germany, from call to return. Everything is real--DuPlessis got permission to film a lot of stuff that you normally wouldn't see filmed. It was originally shown on PBS.

But the movie for me, and I think for many of the non-Mormons at the screening, was somewhat of a disappointment. In particular, the title implies that we're going to see some sort of real religious fervor and excitement. But we don't see that. There were many things that brought back acute memories from my mission (large group meetings in the MTC, trying to introduce the church to someone in a language you barely know, P-day clothes, zone conferences, etc.), but the movie absolutely did not convey the spiritual growth and fire that I felt as a missionary. And that's sad, because that's what really makes a mission a rite of passage for the LDS Church.

I think the main reason the movie failed in this regard is that we were necessarily only shown people behaving with a camera pointed at them. You could tell the missionaries and the people they were interacting with were quite self-conscious, what with the filming and all. That's going to automatically decrease the level of the spirit of those events that we saw. The related problem is that DuPlessis either was not allowed to or rightfully chose not to film much if any of the events that really make a mission a life-changing experience. The moments that make a difference are emotional--kneeling in prayer, fasting for a family you're teaching, loving the people, performing baptisms, seeing people's lives change for the better, learning how God can use you as an instrument to bring about good in the world. The movie showed none of this. It didn't even show any teaching beyond a first visit (although this is Germany, and that may just be how missionaries over there work!).

Beyond that, I was quite disappointed with the filmmaking standards of the movie. Interviews made no indication of who it was we were listening to. White backgrounds were consistently overexposed, glaring out on top of the people. Shots were poorly framed, cutting off people's heads, people walking in front of the camera, and so forth. And although she tried to bring "balance" to the issue by interviewing various returned missionaries (RMs) who have subsequently left the church, their comments are rarely helpful to understanding what a mission is like--they mainly dealt with personal struggles that aren't widespread, or criticisms of the doctrine of the church, a topic not even addressed elsewhere in the movie. I think the movie suffered from their inclusion. Not so much because we need the faithful RM view to counter the non-faithful RM view, but because the point of the movie is to show what a typical mission is like, and the non-faithful RMs have had atypical experiences.

It makes me think that a really good documentary on missionaries might not be possible. Fiction is going to have to be the way to go. "God's Army" was a step in the right direction, and "The Other Side of Heaven," a narrative adaptation of a true story, was too watered down to be much good. I've heard "The Best Two Years" is far better than those, and hope to be able to see it soon.