The very worthy epic picture For Greater Glory: The
True Story of Cristiada, directed by Dean Wright and written
by Michael Love, is a good illustration of why I rather resent
movies that make claims on my critical judgment by presenting
themselves, either explicitly or implicitly as “conservative.”
Ideologically, everything is done right in For Greater
Glory, and it could not be more timely from the conservative
point of view (and my view) of religious freedom, now that Catholic
bishops are suing the government over the HHS mandate regarding
compulsory provision of contraception. Nor is the movie’s
propaganda anything like as crude as that of the anti-Catholic
movies with which it makes such a refreshing contrast. But
aesthetically it leaves a lot to be desired.
I’m afraid that Mr. Wright turns out to be Mr. Wrong. A visual
effects guy who worked on Lord of the Rings and
Chronicles of Narnia, he is not very successful in this,
his first directorial outing, at pacing or making each scene follow
naturally from the last. The movie has a clunky, stodgy look that
makes it hard to enjoy as much as it should be enjoyed. Partly this
is because it tries to do too much. Though the movie is 147 minutes
long, it still feels too short to give a full account of all the
people and events it is trying to present to us in that time. The
story does not unfold in a readily comprehensible form, and parts
of it are tangentially related at best to the central matter of an
agnostic Mexican general, Enrique Gorostieta Velarde (Andy Garcia),
who is hired to lead a rag-tag peasant army of cristeros
against troops loyal to the anti-clerical and anti-Catholic Mexican
government of Plutarco Elías Calles (Rubén Blades) and who finds
his own faith again as a result.
Even Calvin Coolidge (played by Bruce McGill, who doesn’t look
anything like our 30th president) puts in an appearance here. He
gets in on the act by sending his personal envoy, Dwight Morrow
(Bruce Greenwood), to Mexico to look after American oil interests
there and, by the way, to make peace between President Calles and
the rebels. I wondered if this could have been a sop to the left
since, in the movies, American presidents engaged in international
adventurism on behalf of oil companies are an even more infallible
indicator of wickedness than Roman Catholic clergymen. In any case,
however, it has nothing to do with the movie’s primary business and
so gets in the way of it. The same is true of another sub-plot
concerning the martyrdom of Anacleto Gonzales Flores (Eduardo
Verástegui), a pacifist whose relationship to the rebels or their
interesting general, if any, remains obscure.
Another historical martyrdom, that of the 14-year-old José Luis
Sánchez del Rio (Mauricio Kuri), is made relevant by an attempt to
establish a quasi-filial relationship between him and General
Enrique which seems not to have been historical. That in itself is
not so bad, but it is never made clear to us why this otherwise
stoic and unemotional general, after what appears to have been a
very brief acquaintance with Josélito, should have looked on the
young volunteer as a son and wept at the news of his capture.
Saintliness is hard enough to make cinematically believable as it
is, but Messrs. Wright and Love add to the difficulties by amping
up the emotional energy in what can only be described as this
sentimental way. Far better to have omitted the saints and
concentrated on the sinner, the aging but engaging general, who
deserves a fuller treatment than he gets.
The movie also suffers from leaden dialogue. “I may have issues
with the Church,” says General Enrique, employing the sloppy late
20th century American colloquialism for “disagreements” which I’m
pretty sure would not have been comprehensible in the 1920s, “but I
believe in religious freedom.” On introducing himself to the
rebels, he tells them, “I have a gift for military strategy” —
which may be true but doesn’t sound like something a real general
would say. He certainly doesn’t have a gift for inspiring words,
though he attempts them more than once, usually bathetically. “We
may die together, but we will fight with honor and dignity and
cunning,” he tells his men. Also, “Freedom is not just for writers
and for politicians and for fancy documents! Freedom is our home,
our wives, our children, our faith! Freedom is our lives — and we
will defend it or die trying!”
As this is the bit they put in the trailer, it must be something
they’re rather proud of, but to me it sounds as if General Enrique
has unexpectedly chosen to make a somewhat difficult
philosophical argument — oh? is that what freedom is? are you
sure? — rather than appealing, as a genuinely inspiring speaker
would do, to what he knows his men already believe. I don’t want to
be too hard on a movie that tells a thrilling tale of piety and
heroism and from the point of view not of revolutionary utopianism
or the latest in groovy “liberations” but of Christianity and
traditional values. For such courage and originality the movie
deserves to be a success, but it also deserves better writing and
directing than it gets.
