Under the Banner of Heaven struggles to be as compelling as the book it's based on

The A.V. Club

Creator Dustin Lance Black's seven-part FX limited series for Hulu is a true-crime show that is bogged down by sluggish pacing, says Saloni Gajjar. "Jon Krakauer’s 2003 book Under The Banner Of Heaven is a shocking read, one that begins with the gruesome real-life murders of Brenda Lafferty and her 15-month-old daughter in 1984," says Gajjar. "The engrossing volume quickly establishes that it’s not so much a “whodunit” but a “whydunit” as it traces centuries of detailed Mormon history in an attempt to answer what might’ve led to their deaths. Adapting this complicated source material is no easy feat, but creator Dustin Lance Black ... translates Krakauer’s work into an emotionally striking TV drama, in part due to his own upbringing in a Mormon household." Gajjar adds: "To the series’ credit, the writing is incredibly thorough as it covers the immense Mormon background going back to the 1820s. But a drawback of the intricacy is that the dialogue often borders on exposition...Despite part of the show feeling like a knowledge dump, UTBOH still stands out as one of the more sympathetic true-crime dramas in recent times."

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• Under the Banner of Heaven is a powerful portrait of violence and faith: "Under the Banner of Heaven.... asks some very hard questions of its own, starting as a gripping murder mystery set in a seemingly pious, quiet Mormon community," says Angie Han. "But it’s the series’ insistence on asking not just who did it but why, why and why again that turns it into something bigger — something more complex, more thoughtful and ultimately far more unsettling." Han adds: "From the start, Under the Banner of Heaven demonstrates a quiet confidence. Brenda’s death supplies the narrative suspense, but it’s the show’s sense of empathy that proves truly difficult to shake. David Mackenzie, who directed the first two episodes, establishes a handheld style that pulls the viewer into the screen, so present we can almost smell the grassy lawns of Jeb’s carefully manicured suburban world. Meanwhile, Black’s personality-driven dialogue illuminates the intricate web of relationships between its dozen regular characters more efficiently and effectively than paragraphs of dry exposition could."
• Like many series, Under the Banner of Heaven waffles between a hefty dose of reality and Hollywood: "The beauty of the book is that it offers heavy context into the Church of Latter Day Saints, its formation, and how the religious group has been plagued with offshoots that lean into fundamentalist practices like polygamy," says Justin Kirkland, adding: "But as Hollywood tends to do, the limited series from Dustin Lance Black uses star power to convey nuance. The series places Garfield's character at the center of the horrific murder, using him as the mouthpiece to explore context that the book can offer in footnotes and asides. But the truth remains the same: the murders of Brenda and Erica Lafferty needs no embellishment. Though the story may be called Under the Banner of Heaven, what Brenda and Erica experienced was actually hell on Earth."
• Under the Banner of Heaven is too sprawling: "Every entry is 10 minutes too long, and none of the centuries-old sequences are nearly as compelling as the active case from 1984," says Ben Travers. "With so many characters — there are a dozen Laffertys alone, plus new friends and followers added every hour — it can be hard to keep track, and the series adds even more time (via quick flashes of memory, exposition, and more) to help you remember who’s who. Female persecution is a staple of the church noted early and often, though room isn’t made for the cast’s women to establish comparable interiority to their husbands and fathers. All these flaws may prove trivial if the series’ ideas grab you. But all the apparent and admirable love put into this sprawling adaptation may only boil down to one or two simple truths."
• There are two key ways the series approaches the case that make it stand out amongst the vast rest of TV’s true crime offerings: "For one, there’s never much of a doubt who’s responsible for Brenda’s death (though I’ll spare you the details, and let you decide whether or not to open another browser tab for the answer)," says Caroline Framke. "For another, its most central character is a complete fabrication that was created to both drive the show forward and reflect its most pressing motifs in his own bleeding conscience. This could’ve been a disaster; instead, it proves to be the show’s smartest decision by a mile."
• What makes Under the Banner of Heaven great is its cast: "Fresh off his second Oscar nomination, Andrew Garfield once again delivers a captivating performance full of soul and vulnerability," says Meghan O'Keefe. "Gil Birmingham brings a wry sense of humor to his role, which only seems to exist to mask depths of rage. Wyatt Russell is terrifyingly great as Dan Lafferty, the first of the brothers to heed the siren call of Fundamentalism and Daisy Edgar-Jones plays Brenda as if she’s lit from within by purity. The supporting cast features similarly great turns from actors like Chloe Pirrie, Denise Gough, Seth Numrich and Rory Culkin. Under the Banner of Heaven turns Krakauer’s sprawling look at the roots and evolution of Fundamentalist Mormonism into a well-made detective drama."
• Under the Banner of Heaven attempts to circumvent an audience's potential unfamiliarity with its central religion with artificial-feeling history lessons: "One of the strengths of the book was the sense of history, how Krakauer interwove the far past with interviews he had conducted with one of Brenda's convicted killers," says Alison Stine. "That's not the case in the adaptation, where historical flashbacks of the beginnings of Mormonism seem a bit like Unsolved Mysteries re-enactments. Hopefully the history will get more seamless as the show goes on. In the first few episodes, the transitions falter, with the men held for questioning in the murders going into long tirades that lead into the pioneer flashbacks. It feels didactic and odd. Wouldn't Jeb already know well some of the history of his own faith, even if he is not yet ready to acknowledge its darkness and the pain it has caused women, girls and others? The historical insertions also take the audience away from some intense action, making the pacing of the show feel off at times."
• Under the Banner of Heaven tries to be timeless: "Although the miniseries takes place in the same year that Ghostbusters and Purple Rain were released, the production offers few obvious signposts indicating the mid-1980s," says Inkoo Kang. "The decision to underplay the temporal setting suggests that we’re meant to see this as a timeless story, and in many ways, it is. It’s slightly irksome that the show voices the bulk of its feminist critiques through the fathers of daughters, such as Pyre and Allen — the safest and most conservative bid for sympathy imaginable (though Brenda gets a few lines herself in flashbacks). But there’s something hard to shake about the series’s portrait of a tightknit community that acts exactly as designed: shielding its most visible members from consequences at the expense of their victims. The names, faces and ideologies may change, but the impulse to protect the powerful is still too much with us."
• Under the Banner of Heaven is a lopsided look at LDS horrors whose impact is muted by its messiness: The series' "onslaught of off-putting rapid mini-montages that strive to convey Pyre’s headspace, and his tormented questioning of his own faith and its vicious underpinnings" are "this venture’s biggest misstep, both because of their grating incessantness and because they interfere with Garfield’s performance; rather than letting the actor express, on his own, Pyre’s increasingly complicated feelings about the case and his church, Under the Banner of Heaven routinely does it for him," says Nick Schager. "The result is that Garfield’s turn comes across as schematic and skin-deep, sabotaged by a formal approach that wants to explain the very things he should have been allowed to communicate himself. Unfortunately, that shortcoming is emblematic of the enterprise as a whole. There’s at once too much packed into the series’ installments and yet not enough, with Black and company expending unwarranted attention on a cornucopia of detours and diversions that are only sometimes fleshed out, go nowhere illuminating, and muddle this affair’s primary censure of the Mormon church as a violent 19th-century-style cult-y outfit."
• Under the Banner of Heaven attempts to translate Krakauer’s sweeping book through the overused prestige TV trope of multiple timelines: "By far the least successful storyline depicts Mormonism’s early days under founder Joseph Smith – himself a polygamist, although the LDS church did not admit this until 2014," says Adrian Horton. "Whatever support the Mormon historical record lent to Krakauer’s analysis in the book doesn’t translate here; the 19th century scenes – stark, hokey, mostly sans historical context – resemble budget History Channel re-enactments and do almost nothing to enhance the later stories. They’re jarring and unnecessary distractions to the much more nuanced, taut later timelines, not least because they require awkward narration from the present-day characters – particularly poor Allen, also tasked with explaining Brenda to us. Which is a shame, because the modern scenes of characters torn between their faith and their morals could easily stand on their own."
• Under the Banner of Heaven successfully plays "Prestige TV bingo": "Under the Banner of Heaven... is primed to fit into well-worn grooves in your TV brain," says Kathryn VanArendonk. "It is a somewhat fictionalized true-crime story (check); it is about fundamentalist Mormonism and cult dynamics (check) tied to the roots of contemporary extremist politics (chagrined check); it is a show with a sad, grim, and determined primary detective (check) whose relationship to his partner, backgrounded by Utah’s rural wildness, has strong echoes of True Detective (ding ding ding, it’s a prestige-TV bingo!). If 'it often feels like True Detective makes your ears perk up or 'murder among the Mormons' is a tagline that speaks to you, then Under the Banner of Heaven will get the job done. Better than that — it will fulfill those needs handily, even gracefully."
• Read an oral history of how Under the Banner of Heaven came together: "I grew up as a faithful member of the church, of being a Mormon kid in a very devout family," says creator Dustin Lance Black. "You’re raised in the church to doubt your doubts, put your questions on a shelf. I was a very curious kid, so I kept tripping over those rules, asking questions when things didn’t quite make sense. The Mormon church had been there for us in big ways. I was raised by a paralyzed single mother and the church supported us financially so the state wouldn’t come in and I wouldn’t potentially be separated from my mother. But when violence visited our home, the church was not there for my mother and was not there for me. I just started asking questions about this patriarchal structure, why only certain men would be making all the decisions for every woman in the church. Eventually you stop putting your questions on a shelf, and (Under the Banner of Heaven) had a lot of answers."
• Andrew Garfield was drawn to Under the Banner of Heaven because it invites someone to think about and then share deeper thoughts about themselves and their perspectives: “It’s very rare that you would have something so thematically epic in something so personal, in such a horrific, violent murder that would have such ramifications on an entire organization,” he says. “I think that is really juicy stuff.”
• Garfield threw himself into research, determined to explore the intersection of faith, gender, and fundamentalism: "I read the book over 10 years ago, and I just loved it," he says. "I felt riveted and compelled, and I just find the themes and subject matter so fascinating: how fundamentalism and extremism can lead to enabling men to do horrific acts of violent evil in the name of God and love, and they avoid blaming their own egocentric desire. The delusion was just so fascinating to me."
• Creator Dustin Lance Black had a formative experience when he first read Jon Krakauer's book two decades ago: “It felt so true to me and then had all of these layers that I hadn’t yet examined about my childhood faith — my family’s faith still — and how I had grown up in it,” says Black. “It was formative for me.”
• Black spent a decade trying to adapt Krakauer's book, four years of which he spent attempting to turn it into a movie: Eventually, executive producer Brian Grazer suggested they turn the book into a limited series. “When I first optioned this property I was like a child; now I have a child, so it’s that long,” Black remembered, adding: “It’s been a journey, but we knew this would never be an easy one.”