Last night, we had the rare opportunity to watch one of two made for TV fact-based movies, the one on Elizabeth Smart and the one on Jessica Lynch. I watched The Elizabeth Smart Story, then switched to Jessica on commercial breaks. I suppose it counts as Mormon lit.

The Elizabeth Smart Story surprised me. The approach was low key, and quiet, a good deal less sensational than most teleplays in the genre, and it hewed fairly close to the facts, at least as far as I know them. I did follow the Elizabeth Smart story with some interest, but I certainly don't presume to know it well enough to know exactly when they took artistic license. I did notice a few liberties: when Elizabeth was found by Sandy police, she did eventually--after a twenty minute interview--say "thou sayist it." I don't believe she added "I say it." I think they were trying to make Elizabeth appear just that tiny bit more volitional, just a tad less brainwashed. Understandable, and I didn't mind it. I do know that they didn't have the Smarts escort Elizabeth through a huge crowd of media when they took her home from the station.

The teleplay really downplayed the sexual aspect of Elizabeth's kidnapping, and frankly, I was glad. Mitchell did call her his "wife," and a note at the end referred to him being formally charged with aggravated sexual assault. That's enough. Elizabeth's ordeal was horrific enough; they didn't need to sensationalize the worst part of it.

I read one review of the movie that criticized the acting. Frankly, I thought Dylan Baker was fine as Ed Smart. I thought he met what seems to me a tremendous challenge; playing a decent human being trapped in an awful situation and dealing with it as best he could. It was a quietly effective, non-histrionic performance. I also liked Lindsay Frost as Lois Smart; again, she was quietly believable throughout. The scenes where you see the pressure the kidnapping put on their marriage were very well done, I thought. Again, nobody screamed at anyone; they played it as two basically decent people, committed to each other and to their family, but genuinely disagreeing on how to proceed.

The scenes with Amber Marshall as Elizabeth and Tom Everett as Mitchell were less effective. Everett played Mitchell as a more or less generic religious loon, instead of as a specifically Mormon loon. The writing led him that direction, of course, but still, I didn't hear Mitchell's former connections to Mormon culture in his speech patterns, in the falling inflections and the word emphases peculiar to our culture.

At the same time, I'm a bit relieved that that choice was made. Frankly, I think most folks are able to see that it wasn't Mormon culture or Mormon theology that produced Mitchell. Mental illness is what produced him. But while our culture didn't produce him, it did provide him with his unique vocabulary. Mormonism played a very small role in this movie, and that was fine with me.

We didn't need to see much of Emmanuel's wanderings. Elizabeth may indeed have tried as intrepidly to escape as she did in this movie, but it's inconsistent with what else we know of the story. But really, the story here is of Ed Smart, and his persistent unwillingness to give up. He's the only person who initially believed Mary Catherine's identification of Emmanuel (which still seems to me quite wonderful and miraculous), and he's the only person who really did anything about it.

The Salt Lake police come across as well-intentioned bozos in this movie, and that's all to the good. There's not much question that they blew the case five ways from Wednesday. I especially liked their repeated assertions that "we're doing all we can," and "trust us, we know what we're doing." And I thought Baker's gradual disillusionment with such comments was very nicely portrayed.

I thought it was quite a well done film, given that it was a made for TV movie. And there's one last thing I need to say about it. There's been a terrific amount of criticism aimed at Ed Smart in the Salt Lake papers, and in the national media as well. He's seen as someone who is cynically using his daughter's kidnapping for personal gain, as a publicity hound, and so on. I'm quite astounded at how willing good Utah Mormons are to judge the man. Let me just say a few things: first, we have absolutely no right to judge his decisions anyway; second, there was going to be a movie and a book anyway, so why not cooperate and retain some control of content?; third, the Smarts are giving most of the money to charity, and fourth, Ed Smart has an agenda, and has had since this event. He's been pushing for the Amber law. He's been pushing for changes in how the FBI handles these sorts of cases. And he wants to provide hope for other families facing similar tragedies.

I'm just glad his daughter is home and safe. I'm glad Mitchell and Wanda Barzee are in prison. I'm really happy for Angela Ricci, whose husband's good name was dragged through the mud the way it was. (SLC police were so tunnel vision obsessed with Richard Ricci, they ignored far more plausible potential suspects, and that was very well portrayed.) And I'm glad the movie was what is was, quiet, nonsensational, reasonably non-sectarian. And over.

The Jessica Lynch movie, on the other hand, looked awful, what I saw of it. But that's another subject altogether.

Eric Samuelsen