‘prophet’s Prey,’ a Documentary about Mormon Fundamentalists

By Manohla Dargis
New York Times
September 17, 2015

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/18/movies/review-prophets-prey-a-documentary-about-mormon-fundamentalists.html?_r=1

Warren Jeffs being escorted to trial in “Prophet’s Prey,” a documentary by Amy Berg.

The chief attraction of Colorado City, or so it would seem from the brief entry on the website of the Arizona Office of Tourism, isn’t Colorado City but the “nearby scenic attractions” that include the Vermilion and Shinarump Cliffs. Set at the base of ravishing red cliff mountains, the city and its twin, Hildale, Utah, look straight out of Canaan. To watch “Prophet’s Prey,” Amy Berg’s tough and disturbing documentary about a secretive, polygamous Mormon fundamentalist sect with unsettling roots in the region, is to grasp, perhaps, the unspoken reason the Arizona tourism office seems to be suggesting that visitors drive right on by.

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The writer Jon Krakauer didn’t get the message. As he explains in “Prophet’s Prey,” his interest in these particular fundamentalists was sparked when, in 1999, he stopped at a gas station close to Colorado City and Hildale. There, he saw a group of women dressed in the sort of long prairie dresses that Laura Ingalls Wilder might have worn if she had liked frocks stitched out of pastel polyester. This curious sight led him on a journalistic investigation into Mormonism and its extremes, including the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (F.L.D.S.), a breakaway sect with thousands of polygamous true believers in the United States, Canada and Mexico. His book, “Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith,” hit in 2003, but Mr. Krakauer, a guiding voice in the documentary, is still on the case.

“Prophet’s Prey” was written and directed by Ms. Berg, whose earlier documentaries include “Deliver Us From Evil,” a contemporary horror story about Oliver O’Grady, a Roman Catholic priest and admitted pedophile who evaded punishment as he was moved from parish to parish for decades. He was finally defrocked and deported to Ireland, after doing time in prison.

In “Prophet’s Prey,” Ms. Berg has found an eerie counterpart to Mr. O’Grady in the person of Warren Jeffs, a Mormon fundamentalist serving a life sentence for the sexual assault of two followers, including a 12-year-old girl and a 15-year-old he impregnated. By the time he was on trial, Mr. Jeffs was thought to have 78 wives, including 12 who were 15 or younger when they wed.

The documentary tracks the rise and fall of Mr. Jeffs, who in 2002 assumed leadership of the church after the death of his father, Rulon Jeffs. With the on-camera assistance of Mr. Krakauer and Sam Brower, another dogged investigator, Ms. Berg fills in a harrowing portrait of Warren Jeffs as a deluded prophet and serial abuser, especially of girls and women who seem locked in another century. Their old-timey look will be familiar to fans of the HBO drama “Big Love,” about a polygamous family trying to find a middle way between faith and the modern world. In “Prophet’s Prey” there’s little evidence of love in what emerges as a tale of madness and abuse, wealth and criminality, mixed in with anti-government rhetoric — all in in the name of God.

Drawing on archival material, landscape beauty shots and testimonials, including from former F.L.D.S. members, Ms. Berg has created an unnerving, sometimes infuriating documentary. She makes smart choices throughout as she weaves together this chronicle of faith and abuse, but her decision to include an audio recording that was used at Mr. Jeffs’s trial of him allegedly molesting a 12-year-old girl was wrong. This decision contrasts sharply with the scene in the documentary “Grizzly Man,” when an on-camera Werner Herzog listens to — but doesn’t share — an audio recording of the mauling death of two people. Mr. Herzog ratcheted up the drama by withholding the recording, but his decision was also a de facto ethical statement about documentary and the uses of the suffering of others.

For the most part, though, Ms. Berg gets it right, burying Mr. Jeffs with persuasive witness testimony and documentation. Along the way, she gestures at larger, underexplored issues, including the rise of homegrown religious fundamentalism in the light of rights movements for women and children. Fundamentalist Mormons are having some kind of moment, including in cable shows like “Sister Wives” and documentaries like this one, which is based on Mr. Brower’s 2011 best seller of the same title. More movies are still to come, including an adaptation of “Under the Banner of Heaven” that is being developed by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, two of the executive producers of “Prophet’s Prey,” and written by a third executive producer, Dustin Lance Black, who wrote for “Big Love.” The story continues.