SXSW Review: Fall From Grace

For years, the Reverend Fred Phelps has been at the front of a very specific, very personal and highly public crusade. Phelps leads the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, and he and his followers believe sincerely that the United States of America is a nation doomed and dammed -- cursed to fall for its tolerance of homosexuals. Phelps and his flock -- bearing signs that read "God Hates Fags" and similar blunt pronouncements -- picket funerals of AIDS victims, other church services, and recently at the funerals of fallen United States Armed Forces members. K. Ryan Jones was working on a short film for his Kansas University film studies program; he wound up with enough footage -- and, more importantly, enough to think about -- to make a 71-minute documentary.

Fall from Grace mixes sit-down interviews with footage shot at Phelps's picketing events and media coverage; we meet Phelps and his children, and we hear from several people set against Phelps and his ways. Unlike two of last year's best religion-centered documentaries -- Jesus Camp and Deliver us from Evil -- it's hard to imagine anyone leveling a charge of anti-Christian bias against Jones and Fall from Grace, if only because Phelps's message is so extreme -- and, as we learn later in the film, so poisonously narcissistic -- that it's hard to imagine any reasonable person of faith objecting as Phelps spins out theories and opinions into enough rope to dangle from.
Fall from Grace isn't the most polished documentary -- there are several scenes featuring my number one digital documentary pet peeve, the lapel microphone cord plainly visible over whatever the interview subject is wearing; it's one of those little touches that means so much. (See The Aristocrats and Orwell Rolls in His Grave for other examples of this phenomenon.) But Fall from Grace is in part about how what you say is as important as how you say it, so this mild offense against style can be overlooked. More importantly, Jones lets his participants, for the most part, speak for themselves. Phelps's son Timothy, for example, intones into the camera that America is cursed, and the only way to save it is by making sure people "... get the hell scared out of the and turn -- for rizzle." The hip-hop slang is amusing in context; the venom behind it is not. Jones does have to occasionally lead the youngest children in the Phelps clan, but it's not as if he's putting words in their mouth; there's nothing quite as terrifying as watching an 10-year old explain the need to "preach to these fags that God is going to kill them."

The oddest argument in the film is mentioned tangentially during a discussion of why Phelps is picketing the funerals of American service people who died in Iraq. It's not just because God delights in killing the servants of a fag-loving nation; it's also because around the start of the first Gulf War, a bomb damaged Phelps's house. According to Phelps and his family, as an Improvised Explosive Device was used to strike at one of God's fiercest servants, it's only logical to Phelps, that God is now using IED's to kill America's soldiers. It seems like a stretch -- but not to Phelps. We also see Phelps and his family picket the funeral of Cpl. Lucas Frantz, with widow Kelly Frantz explaining, in tears, how that sad day was made even worse by pickets and hatred at the farewell to the man she loved.

Jones may be a first-time film maker, but he had the same challenges as any experienced documentarian -- maintaining access and distance, trying to find vital material, trying to find other voices with something to say counter to his subject. In those challenges, he succeeds; a series of interviews with a pair of Phelps's children who've left the church and the family -- which four of Phelps's 13 children have done -- may linger excessively on filtered close-ups of the phone, but that's less important than what they have to say -- talking about Phelps and his righteous, constant anger.

There's an interesting possibility that Fall from Grace might just be giving Phelps more publicity -- then again, it's hard to imagine anyone, friend or foe, being unaware of Phelps and his campaigns. Phelps's signs have always made for good footage -- and Phelps knows it -- but what Jones does in Fall from Grace is pan down slightly to look at the people holding the signs, and zoom the lens back to set them against the backdrop of their community. Anyone with an interest in the smiling, friendly face of American religious fascism will find Fall from Grace hard to watch, but harder still to turn away from.