'Big Love' and The Bible

This great land of ours, which was founded on religious freedom and tolerance, has always been rich soil for planting odd religious experiments. 1840 saw one of the oldest and most interesting — the Oneida Community, upstate New York: a religious community which invited women to cut their elaborate hair, shorten their skirts, wear pantaloons, work at whatever job suited them, and since there were no marriages in heaven and since Oneida was heaven on Earth, they did away with conventional marriage but made an art of sex. All husbands were married to all wives. Women all had rooms of their own. Every man could make a sexual invitation to any woman who had the right to refuse. Sex was practiced as an art with a (not entirely explained) sexual practice that left no children at a time when New York City hosted more than 6,000 prostitutes and unwanted children roamed the streets. There were numerous other religious communities with unique practices. Now one has come to the screen, and HBO has done it well.

Big Love has the wonderful audacity to explore polygamy, an illegal offshoot of the Mormon Church in modern Utah. Guts and great writers and a crew of wonderful actors play out this remarkable series. The new season began last Sunday night…and as much as I love Big Love, the first episode left me a bit nervous, and I’ll tell you why.

In the event that you haven’t become a fan and followed the series, let me lay out the plot.  But first let me explore a related series of plots in a book  with a religious setting with just as bizarre and with  just as scandalous plot-lines as you’ll find in Big Love. That book is The Bible (Old Testament) — a great and exciting read.

In case you haven’t read it, the Old Testament finds God very disappointed in the nature of his creation. Adam’s wife didn’t listen to God’s admonition about avoiding the fruit tree and got her husband kicked out of the Garden of Eden. Two brothers fall out over the nature of their offerings to God, one kills the other, God marks the killer, and I’ll bet you don’t know why. Not to mark him for punishment but to warn others not to kill him. A mother has two sons, the oldest is to get the blessing. She lies and cheats, and gets her short-sighted husband to bless her choice of the younger son.  And a bunch of jealous brothers dump the favorite youngest into a pit, argue over what to do with him, and end up selling him into slavery. What great stories — material exploited in many films since silent days.

In Big Love, Bill Paxton’s character owns a major hardware store in Utah. He believes in the old “principle” which means that God wants him to take many wives and produce many children…and Bill is a true believer. In the older Mormon days, when there were many more women than men, it was a practical device. Today…well, it’s an oddity. And how odd and how dramatically fascinating is what Big Love explores. A man with three wives and a conflict not only with modern-day Mormonism but with a cult-like community which exploits its faithfulness to “the Prophet” is what makes Big Love so fascinating. The depth of the devotion and of lechery, and of power-domination, and of jealousy — all the human emotions which have remained unchanged since The Bible was written, are part of the dramatic fascination of this series.

The first wife is sensible and stable. Played by Jeanne Tripplehorn, she could have been the monogamous wife, but she accedes to her husband’s desire to live the “principle.” The second wife is quite wonderful. Chloe Sevigny plays the daughter of “the prophet,” and she deserves an award for slipping between  devoted wife and  lying wife, half wanting to be accepted into this fascinating threesome and still  the devoted daughter to a manipulative father. She walks an emotional tightrope. Her father is played by Harry Dean Stanton. He has convinced his community that he is the God-anointed prophet — his women dress in old-fashioned culty clothes . He is angry with the second wife of Bill’s brother Joey,  the quite weak son ( Joey, played to the proper weakness by Joey Doyle). Whenever Bill reaches a comfortable state, Joey is bound to do something stupid and ruin everything. In his zeal to maintain his power, the Prophet accidentally kills Joey’s beloved second wife. The first is a semi-loony who has poisoned a couple of people. At the end of last season, Joey has smothered his father to death.   Complicated? No more than the biblical story of a great prophet traveling through a hostile land with a beautiful wife and fearing that he will be killed by the king who might covet his wife  pretends that his wife is his sister who then moves into the king’s harem. So please don’t be frightened away by the plot complications. It’s part of the charm of the series. Oh did I miss a wife? Third wife Ginnifer Goodwin is really cute and wants to start her own jewelry business.

If this sounds soap-opera-ish, it’s not. As biblical characters took many wives, so Bill manages to keep his odd-shaped family afloat in a challenging world.

What’s most fascinating, and what lifts this series above the ordinary, is the relationship of the sister-wives. It’s a comfortable relationship of three women who “believe.” They are loving and sharing (most of the time), they appreciate that their “husband” takes turns sleeping with them (to the point where Bill must turn to Viagra for support), and when he falls in love with a fourth, they support him since she will be brought into the family and will be sister to them. They live a remarkable community life, eating at the same table, caring for their children, taking care to support each other.

The “prophet” passes essentially as a loving man with good intentions, despite the cruelty of his decisions. His “first wife” is a remarkable Mary Kay Place (remember her from The Big Chill?). No matter what he does, she’s loyal.  Bill’s own father (Bill was thrown out of the prophet’s  community by this cruel father) is played to chilling perfection by Bruce Dern.  Remember him from the wonderful Silent Running and the role of the husband in The Great Gatsby? Now he wild-haired and slovenly with a  heart of total ice. He’s nasty, unfeeling — a really rotten guy. Yet the real villains are the Greens,  wretches who, when they want something from someone and can’t get it, heat up the branding iron and…watch it, you’ll see.

Okay, that was last season. And here’s what makes me a bit nervous. Bill is expanding his business. He’s partnered with an Indian reservation to create Utah gambling and now there’s talk of his interest in running for political office to try to vindicate polygamy and make his family secure. The new plot-line seems less involved with the internal chaos of this unusual family — an essentially loyal and loving family — and more inclined to move “outward.” A casino to run, Indian community to appease, and now moving into the outside world? Oh Bill, watch out. The writers may be getting you into really hot water.

Big Love is biblical in its exposure of human flaws, but moving outward into a dangerous world in which polygamy is against the law reminds me of a foolish move made by the Oneida Community, a decision  which was its downfall, and also of a foolish move made by the famous and infamous Oscar Wilde. Oneida insisted on using the older men to “train” the young girls who decide to enter the community “social life.” Was it the Presbyterians (not sure) who went after him and accused him of having sex with underage girls? He ran off to Canada, and this quite remarkable and happy community broke up. Oscar Wilde, the most famous playwright of his age, was a closet homosexual in a time when homosexuality was punished by two years hard labor. His wife did not know (as far as we know by her letters), and even his good friends did not know (perhaps). His seemed to be a happy marriage with two children he adored. Then his boyfriend’s father became angry, accused Wilde openly of “posing as a sodomite,” and the mad boyfriend convinced Wilde to sue for libel. You don’t want to sue for libel when you suspect that opening the subject might bring in a few facts to crash down on your head…which happened, of course.

Please, writers of Big Love, don’t go too far out into a world which does not accept polygamy. I like these characters.   I’m hooked on the series. What’s going to happen? I guess I’ll have  to watch to find out.

Excellent writing, great drama, great acting.

HBO Sunday nights.