Mr. Jones

Sometimes cinema can bring history alive and little known facts and personalities can be highlighted or rediscovered, and so it is here. Gareth Jones was a diplomat and journalist who wrote about the terrible famine in the Ukraine during the early 1930s which the Soviet's, and many others, we're trying to hide at the time. It's a sober but fascinating insight into a almost forgotten episode, and is very skilfully done with a fine central performance by Edward Norton as Jones and well staged scenes of his tense visits to the USSR and his gradual discovery of the regimes corruption and lies. Tightly scripted and directed, this is one worth discovering.

All the terror, horror and atrocities of the war and its effects on Ukraine, the Holodomor (Famine of Terror or the Great Famine), including empty villages, starving people, cannibalism and the forced harvest of grain, a beautiful but belated homage to the Lord Gareth Jones (journalist), very sad, appropriate for the current war Russia x Ukraine, a real story, Portraits of War, told simply and efficiently, as he wanted and reports at the beginning of the film...

Saw this at Berlinale and was impressed. Agnieszka Holland created a strong historical drama, employing artistical license here an there. But the main points (different from what user-973-741969 claims in his review) are true. Blasphemy it is only to those who still worship Stalin. The movie follows political advisor/journalist Gareth Jones. After losing his job with the british foreign secretary in London he tries to reeignite his career through an interview with Stalin. And why not since he already interviewed Hitler and Goebbels (where the movie lazily unterplays his admiration for the pre-war-Nazis. Sadly Jones didn´t live to see their downfall and could never reevaluate his naivety). In Moscow, Jones contacts NYT-Reporter Duranty, who is well connected an a staunch supporter of Stalin. Jones doesnt make it to the Soviet Leader but can board a train south to inspect the industrialisation of the Soviet Union. But he escapes the agents that accompany him and travels on his own through Ukraine to witness the Holodomor, a famine that cost millions of lives as a result of Stalins communist reshaping of agriculture in 1933 and was until then mostly unheard of outside of the USSR - and even in the SU. Back in the west Jones has a hard time to prove his allegations. His camera was taken, Duranty, who has a much better reputation calls him a liar and even the british government doesn´t want to risk the lucrative economic relations with the USSR. Holland focuses only partly on the famine and more on the role of stalinist propaganda and the gullability of western media and politics, that swept this catastrophe under the rug for decades. It´s a thrilling movie that doesn´t have the budget to show millions of dead and instead focuses on intimate an gruesome details. The luxury of the elites (western & russian) in Moscow are in stark contrast to the suffering of the peasants. "Mr Jones" brings us to the beginning of worldwide propaganda and fake news strategies where a journalists live is cheap and the people are just pawns in hands of big powers.

The Allies had to Eat a Lot of Crow while Looking the Other Way and Knowingly Suppress the Willful Starvation of Millions by Stalin.

A Sociopathic Dictator that was as Evil as Anything Humanity had to Endure.

To Win the Fight Against the Nazis and Japan for World Dominance, it was Decided to Allow Stalin to do What Stalin Did Without Interference.

This is the Story of a Naive but Brave Journalist, Gareth Jones, who Ended-Up Paying the Ultimate Price for being a Truth-Teller.

And His Uncovering First-Hand the Deliberate Starvation of Millions in and around Ukraine in the Soviet Union.

He Tries to Get Someone, Anyone to Believe what He has Seen to get the World to Oppose such Mass Murder.

Politics, Greed, and Self-Preservation were Opposing His Every Effort and the Movie Tells His Story in a Personal and Compelling Montage of Boardrooms, Trains, and Captivity.

The Enormous Human Toll is so Devastating and Horrendous, the Story-Telling can Never Really Capture the Heart-Breaking Suffering of the Population.

But it has to be Attempted Now and Then to Remind the World of the Evil Around Us and to Shed Light on the Darkest Deeds Done Right Before Our Eyes and the Consequences of Doing Nothing.

The Film is Captivating, Consuming, and Frustrating with an All-Too-Real-Feel that Brings the Story Home for Us to See a Relatively Unknown Event and is only so, because We Let it Be Unknown.

Sadly, Almost a Century After it Should Have Been Known.

... innocent comrades, as a result of tyrannical, incompetent and blinkered beliefs, in a system that still exists today bizarrely in some parts of the world. The famine of 1930s Russia and the man who bravely revealed those secrets presented in a down to earth and informative way with minimal poetic licence.