The documentary Keep Sweet traces the remarkable aftermath of the Warren Jeffs child sexual abuse scandal in an isolated settlement of fundamentalist Mormons. A decade after, a tiny community tries to wrangle a new future.
Fundamentalist Mormons broke from the mainstream Church of Latter Day Saints, chiefly over the practice of polygamy, which they call plural marriage, and founded settlements in remote corners of the Great Basin. The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) created a community in the adjoining border hamlets of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona.
In 2002, Warren Jeffs took over as the FLDS’ “prophet”, became the community’s absolute dictator, and implemented a reign of terror that included forcing child marriages to older men and expelling anyone who disagreed with him. This ended in 2006 with Jeff’s conviction on child sexual abuse charges. Warren Jeffs’ DNA established that he had impregnated a 15-year-old “wife”, and there was audio recording of sex with a 12-year-old. The title of this film comes from one of Warren Jeffs’ creepiest exhortations.
Keep Sweet returns to Hildale and Colorado City to find a community traumatized and torn asunder. Many of those victimized by Jeffs have returned to live among Jeffs loyalists, and the power dynamic has shifted. Of course, those on both sides grew up together in the intimacy of a tiny, isolated community.
Keep Sweet is directed by Don Argott (Framing John DeLorean, Art of the Steal, Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time). It benefits from footage of the community shot by producer Glenn Meehan a decade earlier; Meehan was documenting the “lost boys” – teenage boys forced to leave Hildale and Colorado City by Jeffs so older men would have less competition for teenage “brides”.
Some of the residents are nostalgic for the Jeffs regime, in denial of Jeffs’ misdeeds, and even ready to lose their homes rather than submit to legal authority. In what I find a sometimes stunning exercise in even-handedness, Argott allows these folks to have their voice and lets the audience members make their own assessments. Argott is sympathetically protective and respectful of everyone’s humanity, no matter how misguided.
For more depth on the Warren Jeffs case itself, I recommend Amy Berg’s fine documentary Prophet’s Prey (Showtime, Amazon, Vudu and YouTube). And for an offbeat fictional narrative on fundamentalist Mormons, there’s Electrick Children (Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube); it’s a story of magical Mormon teen runaways in Vegas (and it was my first look at Julia Garner of Ozark and The Assistant). And there’s the fictional Juniper Creek compound in Big Love, led by characters played by Harry Dean Stanton and Matt Ross.
This is a compelling true story of those who choose to heal – and those who deny that there was any wound to heal. Keep Sweet opens November 24 on discovery+.