Jonestown: Terror in the Jungle

The revolution will be televised. I'm quite a sucker for films about cults, but the remarkable thing is how many of them were caught on film. But the Peoples Temple was the cult-uber-ales, which ended in the murder-suicide of almost a thousand of its members; and even this is mostly on the record, including live action footage taken as Jones's followers shot and killed a U.S. representative. The documentary thus almost makes itself, although it's well put together, with interviews carried out with some survivors of the massacre. None of these now see any good whatsoever in the Temple (unlike some other cults who still retain some support amonst their ex-members); and they explain their past decisions as a mixture of beguilment and coerction. Founder Jim Jones had a certain charisma, albeit a creepy one; but the take home message is that people see what they need to (or, in the words of Bruce Springsteen, "at the end of every long hard day people find some reason to believe"). The scale of the tragedy makes the story compelling; you'd like to think it couldn't happen again, but you'd probably be wrong.

Jonestown is a surprisingly good miniseries on the People's Temple cult started and ended (through mass suicide and murder) by Jim Jones. Very insightful and really helps to explain what sounds at first like an impossible event in Guyana.

Why was this man not locked up? How many years did he get away with conning and fooling the people, he was a con man and a junkie, the feds should of been on this man case years before they got to the jungle, getting invited to Jimmy Carter's inauguration I think tells its own story of where the country was at, the man should of been locked up.

This is by far the best documentary on the Jonestown massacre. It was very thorough and relied on interviews of people that were actually there. While other documentaries were also good this one had much more of an air of authenticity. Also it gave very much insight on the reason for the mass suicide. The people interviewed were considered complicit at the time which is probably while they were not used in earlier documentaries. Time has diluted that complicity.

Released in memory of the 40th anniversary of the Jonestown mass suicide in Guyana in 1978, this documentary came up and revealed plenty of new things just when people thought nothing more could be added after countless of similar projects pop out over the decades. For a little while, I thought this was the most comprehensive and the most complete documentary about cult leader Jim Jones and the People's Temple Church but I was slightly wronged as the events progressed and started to notice some missing things that should have been addressed or better explained for those who don't know much or anything about the tragic death of 918 people in the jungle after following the crazed Jones and his socialist mission of creating paradise on earth celebrating the union between blacks and whites.

I'm not gonna keep repeating the same old stuff about details, rise and fall of Jones and his followers since the documentary has all covered up in great detail through the stories of Jonestown survivors, two of Jones' adoptive sons and one reporter, and most of it it's all common knowledge and easy to verify on the internet. A couple of info you can also find in other documentaries.

But there are plenty of new things or unthought (at least to me) issues that impressed me very much - such as the survivors return which was followed with intense scrutiny by the media and the FBI since they could be considered as suspects in a mass killing rather than the official suicide version (interesting point that never crossed my mind over the decades, and also a point that was never mentioned in other films). Plus the archive images and audios are a result of a thoughtful research which makes of this project the impression of being a lot more complete than similar versions of same topic out there (though I'd really wish they played the death tape for a little longer and tell the story on how it lasted for longer than expected due to some strange battery error).

For a whole hour this was going amazingly well and very informative until they mess up with one known fact and another one I had to dig a little more: voice of reason Christine Miller is presented in this documentary as a footnote and it's not explained exactly her importance during the final moments of Jonestown and the people there. For those who don't know, when Jones was calling out for the revolutionary suicide and everyone was supposed to accept their fate, Miller stood up and asked "Is it too late for Russia?" which was an original plan of Jones if everything went wrong after failing in America due to persecution from media and defectors of his group. What she means was why can't we escape to another place and live our socialist plan somewhere else instead of everybody having to die. But she was rebutted and the crowd shushed her up. 900+ people and only one could find a way out yet no one cared, and this documentary presents her in just one minute without showing the challenge (which was recorded on the death tape and that's why the story is known).

The second issue comes with mysterious hitman Larry Layton, who was involved in the tarmac shooting of congressman Leo Ryan and the defectors from Jonestown who are returning to the U. S. The film mentions that Layton was the only person charged with the murders on Jonestown (not the suicide or any possible killing there) but it doesn't talk about his conviction, his appeals and how a Jonestown survivor testimony helped him in being released from jail after 20 years. This bit I had to research and I was quite shocked in finding that Vernon Gosney (who appears in this movie and many others about Jonestown) was fundamental in Layton's release (after all, Gosney was shot by him on the plane) - but there's a strange good reasoning for such.

Except for those omissions, the documentary is near-perfect in stating the facts and washing away some unfounded rumours - some we don't even bother to put on the same sentence because the internet has plenty of things about the issue. It could have go on with an extra half-hour to present its impact around the world and why it's still something discussed many decades later with similar cults doing the same act. And to say we'll forget about the tragedy of men, women and children by the hundreds so easily, it won't happen and Hollywood has already two films in play: one with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and another one with Leonardo DiCaprio (who worked as executive producer of this special way before media reveal about his project). I think it's important for a new generation and new audiences to find out about this terrible tragic story because it reveals a darker side of the human condition that can't be ignored, there are lessons to be learned from it and finally Hollywood is getting some interest with it - sure, there's the 1980 miniseries starring Powers Boothe in an EMMY award winning performance and that exploitation movie with Stuart Whitman but those were rushed projects, without a proper time for research. Hopefully, we'll get better pictures. Until then, the documentaries, the books and the official site conducted by the survivors remain our great sources of information. 9/10.