Say what you will about Richard Dutcher, he keeps after his dream.

With his new film, "Falling," the man who gave us "God's Army" has made a movie that feels and looks like the "blood operas" so many Hollywood heavyweights are making. Dutcher has mastered the moves — the bouncy, hand-held camera shots, the fractured narrative. He uses Hollywood's favorite obscenity and trades on "violence chic" — the latest craze where directors truck in gallons of stage blood to splatter on their characters — the cinema's latest version of "war paint."

The warriors in Dutcher's film are Eric Boyle — a former LDS missionary — and his wife, Davey. We meet them in midstream, just as their world is exploding. We learn later they had decided to sacrifice everything for a small, dry crust of Tinseltown stardom.

Dutcher wrote this script before he wrote "God's Army," so it's a young writer's screenplay, packed to the gills with irony and allusions to the classics. We get overtones of Faust selling his soul and Macbeth letting pride lead him toward the heights, until he plummets to his doom. For all I know, there's even some Job (think "boil") and King David ("Davey") here. And it all ends in a signature big finish — this time an "I fall upon the thorns of life" scene reminiscent of Puccini (without all the singing).

I left the theater in a somber mood.

But I also left with a question.

Why, I wondered, would none of Dutcher's pyrotechnics stay with me while a little scene from "To Kill a Mockingbird" — a film I saw decades ago — still gave me chills? I'm talking about the moment where attorney Gregory Peck, drained and defeated, walks from the courtroom and — out of nowhere — gets a standing ovation from the black people in the gallery.

I confess, one reason films like "Falling" don't move me is I've seen my share of bloody, theatrical violence over the years.

But more than that, Harper Lee's "Mockingbird" was written for the screen by Horton Foote — who also gave us "Tender Mercies" and "A Trip to Bountiful." And Foote knows the key to my heart. He knows that to be moving and memorable, human experience doesn't need to be written with great flames in the stars — like "Falling," "No Country for Old Men" and "Sweeney Todd." Great suffering, sin and moments of humanity can be distilled down and put into the lives of people living understated lives.

Wonder and grandeur can be even more powerful and unforgettable when spoken in a still, small voice.

A couple of weeks ago, an LDS sister in Brigham City (the town, not the movie) asked me to listen to a little song she'd composed. She was originally from Argentina, where she'd been swept off her feet by a handsome young police goon. He eventually left her with a mentally disabled daughter and two sons who inherited their father's penchant for knocking people around. She'd remarried, but her home remained a halfway house for her poor, wayfaring children of grief. Each day of her life was a gauntlet.

But that's not what her song was about. She sang it in a wee voice. I could barely follow the melody or make out the words. But I did make them out. Her song was a song about "hope."

It was a widow's-mite moment in a world that prizes dazzling high-stakes drama.

I'd love to see what Horton Foote could do with that little LDS mother's life. For one thing, I know her small and timid song will have sway in my life. It will remain in heart, I'm afraid, long after Richard Dutcher's "Falling" has faded.

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Jerry Johnston is a Deseret Morning News staff writer. "New Harmony" appears weekly in the Mormon Times section. E-mail: jerjohn@desnews.com