Watched
Latter Days again last night. There are movies that you know are intensely problematic, poorly structured, too on-the-nose in their writing etc... but you respond to them anyway if you know where they're coming from. This movie is like that --plot details are sometimes ludicrous but it's also highly realistic in terms of 'capturing' mormon missionary speak, gay mormon angst, and mormon family interactions with a black sheep in their mix, etc...
Now Tony Kushner also went to this spiritual crisis well famously with
Angels in America which is roughly 2.79 trillion times more majestic, beautifully written, important, etc... but he was an outsider looking in and though he wasn't exactly going for naturalistic dialogue, his dialogue also was written clearly from an outsider perspective looking in (Mormons speak in very specific ways and this movie knows how they speak) rather than a former insider looking back (which I assume the writer/director here was -or else how is it this spookily accurate)
Here comes the PSA: If you are a Mormon or former Mormon or wannabe former Mormon and find yourself in this protagonists situation with the church
this is a great website to visit.
