Deseret (1995)

Deseret: Directed by James Benning. With Fred Gardner. Landscape shots of Utah with narration chronicling its history by way of The New York Times excerpts from the 1850s to the 1990s.

“So far Iu0026#39;ve only seen this on YouTube on an awful, faded, scratched and beat up print, so this could well be even better than my reaction. But itu0026#39;s already pretty fascinating. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eBenning takes striking images of modern day Utah – both landscapes and civilization — and overlays them with a series of news stories read aloud from The New York Times, following Utahu0026#39;s history from the 1840s to the 1980s. A fascinating history lesson, full of contradictions (e.g. Mormon leaders often come off as monsters, but occasionally seem far more sane and kind than the world around them).u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe echoes between the images and the history, knowing that the people weu0026#39;re hearing about lived and died on the lands weu0026#39;re looking at make all sorts of poetic connections about the land, the news media, religion, the nature of u0026#39;progressu0026#39;. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eNever boring, it somehow just missed greatness for me, perhaps because the more emotional layer I kept expecting never quite hit. But if I could see a good print, if those landscapes could show the naked primal beauty I suspect the images have, I have a feeling this could work at yet another level.”