JONESTOWN: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PEOPLES TEMPLE
The Pied Piper of Hell on Utopia's Island
PopcornReel.com Movie Review: "Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple"
By Omar P.L. Moore/November 4, 2006
November 18, 1978 -- almost 28 years ago -- saw the largest mass
suicide in history -- in the country of Guyana, in South America.
In the middle of the massacre was Jim Jones, a lonely orphan who grew up
parentless in Indiana as a young boy. A poverty-stricken kid and an
outsider, Jones' renegade status would later be a huge catalyst in galvanizing
the wretched, despised and the forgotten to a world where people would be free
from the ills that paralyzed the country from whence Jones and his followers
came.
All told, 913 people died.
Documentary filmmaker Stanley Nelson chronicles the road to November 18, 1978 in
"Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple", a documentary that is
indescribable in its pain, horror and provocation of anger. When
experiencing this powerful, well-made and in-depth work it is difficult to think
that the amount of loss for some of the families of those in the Peoples Temple
can be believed. When the wrenching end credits roll with the news of some
families losing four, five or six members it devastates the heart.
The Peoples Temple was a sanctuary where a mix of white and predominantly black
parishioners worshipped the Pentecostal-type church that Jones was the leader
of. Charismatic, engaging, and hypnotic in his ability, Jones soon
convinced followers that he was God-like. A man committed to helping the
least among those in society, he gained respect from many including the likes of
Richard Nixon and former California governor Jerry Brown and wielded power and
influence, raising money for politicians in his travels to San Francisco.
Jones' followers were true believers -- and Mr. Nelson captures this through
some previously unseen video and audio footage and most tellingly in interviews
with survivors of the Temple, which moved around from Indiana in the 1950's to
Redwood Valley to San Francisco in the 1960's and 1970's and then to Guyana in
1977.
Dark figure, bright influence: Jones
(right) with then-San Francisco mayor George Moscone; with future California
governor Jerry Brown; with the humanitarian and Rev. Cecil Williams (left) of
San Francisco's Glide Church, and then-San Francisco police chief Charles Gain
(center) in the 1970's. (Photos from the book "Six Years With God",
written by Jeannie Mills, a former Temple member who would be tragically
murdered along with her husband and daughter in Berkeley in 1980.)
This hopeful story evolves into a nightmare of a paranoid, sociopath who staged
mock healing sessions and much more horrificly, raped and sexually abused a
number of his parishioners and their children and committed financial fraud.
Among many things, "Jonestown" examines at what point followers sense that
something they are following could lead them to danger. There is a "do you
believe your lying eyes?" quality to what the witnesses and survivors tell
Nelson about the horrors of what occurred in Jonestown. As they recall
their despair, reverence and agony with Jonestown, we see their pain and
weariness framed by their debilitating loss of family. Nelson cleverly
shows that the seeds of disaster had been sown in Jim Jones long before the that
fateful November afternoon.
The film's scope expands when Jim Jones and his followers arrived in Guyana to
build Jonestown, to flee from what Jones believed was the decaying of America.
Jonestown however, transformed from an industrious, peace-loving, do-gooder
community into a group crippled by endless round-the-clock work, sleep-deprived,
close-minded, fearful, racked with mistrust and abuse.
For all of this "Jonestown" doesn't make Jim Jones anything beyond a villain and
no less than a tragic, frustrating, maddening and polarizing figure. Even
towards the end some followers expressed belief in Jones even as his mental
health deteriorated, while others wanted to leave Jonestown to be home in the
U.S. with their families, who had campaigned through the domestic press for
their loved ones to return home. Some of the toughest footage comes in the
film's last 20 minutes, when a delegation of U.S. political officials and
members of the "Concerned Relatives of Peoples Temple Members", headed by San
Francisco Congressman Leo Ryan (who was killed in the shootout in Jonestown) and
current San Francisco politician Jackie Speier (who was shot five times) arrived
to investigate allegations of human rights abuses at the Peoples Temple.
Sheer incredulity reigns in the audience when Ryan utters on screen that "a
cloak of the shield of the U.S. government" had arrived in Jonestown, as if
acting to provide security and protect against any trouble that could occur.
Ryan's comment brings a nervous laugh, as well as a feeling of naivety.
There is audio and video of the ambush shooting by Jones' armed guards and
followers of the delegation and of escapees from the Peoples Temple as they
tried to board a Cessna plane to leave Jonestown. Along with the
never-before-heard audio of the mass-suicide by Kool-Aid laced with cyanide, as
Jones' haunting words pierce the hall where men, women, children and babies
died. Jones himself perished, but left behind Jim Jones, Jr., a black man
whom the white man had adopted as a young boy in racially-polarized Indiana.
As Jones Jr. tells his story you realize that Nelson could not have scripted
such irony. Nelson though captures this story in a marvelous way -- in one
of the year's best documentaries.
The events of Jonestown were unforgettable, and so is this very good documentary
-- a story about a notorious tragedy which Stanley Nelson captures in such depth
and detail -- which has to be seen, heard and comprehended to be believed.
"Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple" opened in San Francisco and
several other U.S. cities yesterday, and opened in New York on October 27 .
The film will be shown on PBS television sometime early next year -- but its
full power is felt on the big screen where it must be seen to be comprehended.
The film lasts for 86 minutes and is not rated.
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