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120
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ranked #232,598 most helpful out of 571,544,897 reviews
★☆☆☆☆
Not a documentary - a mislabeled editorial at best, an unlabeled informercial at worst.
So, now I know everything that's good about Gloriavale - at least in the opinion of the male community leaders who obviously approved and supported the making of this series. I am angry that Amazon wasted my time by labeling thus as a documentary. If the Gloriavale community leaders helped pay for it, it's an infomercial. If not, it's an editorial in the guise of a documentary. Expecting a bone fide documentary, I kept waiting for it to get to the hard questions: - What happens when a girl says no to a proposal of marriage? What happens if someone who is engaged decides not to go through with the wedding? (Note from the Glaring Inaccuracy Department: unless no one who was married has ever left the community, or no married person who has left the community - or their spouse - has ever filed for divorce, the divorce rate is _not_ "zero.") - What happens when a girl is lousy at cooking, cleaning, and sewing; but a whiz with livestock and machinery? What happens when a boy can't cut it with cattle or machinery, but is great at working with kids? - What happens if a woman is medically incapable of pregnancy or childbirth? If a man is medically incapable of fathering children? - What happens if one person's honest mistake harms someone else - like an auto or industrial accident? How is this adjudicated fairly if the person who caused the accident is a elder male leader and the victim is a young female low in the hierarchy? Does the outcome depend on her father's or husband's place in the hierarchy, and how much political capital he chooses to expend for her? - What happens when times are hard? When the cattle get some disease, or the bottom falls out of the market? How is hardship distributed, shared, and endured? - What happens when a child dies, or a pregnancy miscarries? - What happens when a pregnancy occurs outside of wedlock? (And please don't tell me such a thing never occurs.) (Also, the Glaring Inaccuracy Department would like to know whether, when this does occur, it remains true that "Every child is welcomed.") - What happens when a crime is committed, especially crimes like rape and domestic abuse? (Please don't tell me that those things never occur either.) I'm interested in small religious communities, and how they manage life's problems and humanity's universal failings & frailties. But I'm not interested in love letters to the leaders of fundamentalist cults - especially love letters they sent themselves.
January 2020 · Movies and TV
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2.3★ · 123 ratings, as of 2023
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