Purely Joyful Movie!

Good concept, poorly executed.

Dreadfully Boring

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

The events that led to the deaths of 909 Americans, most of whom voluntarily gave up their lives under the watch and orders of a sadistic, egomaniacal, hypocritical, but convincing madman are, by themselves, very difficult to accept. Any reasonable person would not want to accept that these things have happened, and continue to happen today on a lower magnitude. However, it is best to know how these things happen so that history doesn't repeat itself. It is a lesson that, ironically, was actually spelled out in all capital letters on a sign that hung prominently in Jonestown, Guyana: "THOSE WHO CANNOT REMEMBER THE PAST ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT". It's even more ironic that this particular sign can be seen in the haunting photographs hanging over the lifeless bodies of unfortunate victims.The things that happened in Guyana on November 18, 1978 are a tough pill to swallow, that's for sure. What's great about a documentary like "Jonestown: The Life And Death of People's Temple" is that many of the events leading up to the notorious mass suicides are unfolded with the aid of vast amounts of archive footage, revealing photographs, and absolutely no narration whatsoever. The accounts of more than a dozen former People's Temple members, including some who miraculously made it out of Jonestown alive, provide the much-needed support for this heavy-handed historical account.Viewers who are unaware of the events, or who don't know where the expression "drinking the purple Kool Aid" comes from, will probably be shocked even in the first five minutes of this movie. It is then that the who, what, when, where and how are revealed, none of which is pretty. It is to find out the why that many people, including myself, would want to watch this documentary.Deborah Layton, a former People's Temple member who wrote a bestselling book about her ordeal with Reverend Jim Jones and his followers, starts the documentary out right by saying, "Nobody joins a cult. Nobody joins something they think's gonna hurt them. You join a religious organization, you join a political movement, and you join with people that you really like". Upon hearing this statement, I could not help but think of the proverb, "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions".More pertinent to this story, it seemed as though Jim Jones founded the People's Temple on very good intentions. His church embraced integration when many other churches were against it. When his congregation grew, the Temple provided a great amount of community service. As you watch the footage of the church services, you see so many happy people, and it's easy to forget the magnitude of the group's eventual demise.In fact, the interviewees do a great job expressing their reasons for joining the Temple. They also delve into some interesting details about when Jim Jones revealed his true intentions to them behind closed doors. Let's just say that some of his tactics ranged from public humiliation to sodomy.Of course, once Reverend Jones and company hightail it to a remote location in Guyana, the story gets even more disturbing. The opinions of Jonestown vary amongst the survivors. Some hated it from the start, while others loved it up until the very end. Regardless, the accounts that came from all these people, including Jim Jones' adopted African-American son Jim Jones, Jr., are all fascinating.Director Stanley Nelson did some great research for this documentary, and the interviews served as the backbone for this project. The only weakness the documentary has involves the aftermath of the survivors. You're given an epilogue consisting solely of what family and friends each surviving member lost. What I wanted to know, however, is how the survivors, who had given their lives and possessions to the People's Temple, moved on from the ordeal. They lost everything, yet when it was probably easiest to kill themselves along with the other Guyana members, they are still around today to tell the tale. It also would have been nice to know if they are successful or not.Actually, Nelson wanted to include such information, but claimed he ran out of time. If he directs a companion piece to this documentary that includes such information, it would be information that would offset the pain of such a tragedy at least a little, and that is all most viewers could ask for in this instance.

I just ordered the DVD edition of this extraordinary documentary about Jonestown and the People's Temple. It's probably one of the most under-written events of our times. We don't know enough to pass judgment or should we on the members of the People's Temple. They all had their reasons for joining and when they got in. It was very difficult to get out. Jim Jones Sr. was a very powerful man both in politics and in the church. He persuaded people to sign over their life savings, their children, their homes, and their lives to him. He sought power, domination, and ultimate control over his members who he feigned to love. He was maniac, madman, religious leader who sent hundreds to their deaths because his reign of terror was finally over after the Congressman's visit. He believed it was all over and in fact he was dying and so was Marcy, his long-suffering wife, who endured humiliation and his infidelities. In the end, Jim Jones was the ultimate coward, afraid of death, so he brought hundreds into his plan. The revolutionary suicide was practiced many times before during the white nights of horror. This time, it was real. It didn't have to be. Our government and the Guyanese should have been more involved. There was a warrant out for his arrest and the custody battle over John Victor Stoen should have been over and he should have been returned to his parents in America who were former members. It should have never happened but it did and we must learn from it or 900 died in vain.

The horrific story of the Jonestown massacre never stops to stir powerful emotions in all of us. A man who attempted to fight segregation and racism in 1950's Indiana ends up as a crazy communist style dictator and slaughters over 900 hundred of his flock. It is easy to see how Jim Jones managed to attract so many faithful in the beginning. There are lost souls everywhere, and it seems there are more of them every day. He reached to those who didn't matter in a society obsessed with money and success. He provided family to many who never had it. And most of all he made those who believed in him important and unique.But, alas that kind of power and adoration always ends in tragedy. Jim Jones was a drug addict and a fake, and above all a dangerous, disturbed person. The consequence is hundreds of dead and many more damaged for life. There is one question that poses itself. Why is it that in our country, "the greatest land on earth", so many people seek solace in the next world following crazed prophets. The answer to that question might be a sobering one. There is no room for failure and weakness in America. When that happens, you are on your own. Until some Jones, Koresh or Alamo comes along and the real horror starts.

This is a very accomplished documentary. It reveals, via its interviewees, a level of despair and dismay that the past twenty eight years have yet to efface. Whole families - indeed an entire community were liquidated in minutes on November 18, 1978. Jim Jones was a conventional mid-western preacher in every respect bar one - his empathy for African Americans, and therefore his commitment to the idea of a racially integrated church. Of course many conventional churches - Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Presbyterians, etc., reached out to marginalised communities, but this tendency was perhaps less pronounced in the southern evangelical tradition, which was highly influential in Jones' home state of Indiana (which had been the epicentre of Klu Klux Klan activity in the decade before Jones' birth under the leadership of Ed Jackson and the infamous David Stephenson). The fact that Jones was a little ahead of the curve on the most sensitive and essential issue in American society, and since he was cursed by an unusual sense of self-belief, it led him to believe that he was special, and that his message and the principles by which he operated his church, were unique. Once he comprehended the uniqueness of his mission there was really no limit to his ambitions - he could be anything - he could be the son of God or he could be an avenging angel. In fact he was also a huckster and con-man of the first order with a vastly inflated sense of his own importance, and his relative ignorance of ecclesiastical history prevented him from acknowledging that there have been several important communistic sects in the Christian tradition - not least in America (viz. the early Anabaptists in Reformation Germany, the Diggers/True Levellers in Commonwealth England, the Shakers and certain aspects of Mormonism, etc.).As Jones staked out ever greater claims for himself, he placed himself on a trajectory of spiritual fraud that was so steep that any mis-step or retreat might bring his whole house of cards to the point of collapse. He therefore became hopelessly compromised: he could either become the messiah or another one of California's many prison inmates. The stress of this might explain the paranoia, the abuse of those in his power and the self-abuse that occurred as his 'ministry' progressed. In the end he had taken his loyal and long-suffering congregation so far (both emotionally and physically) that he must have reasoned that the only way of evading an wretched reckoning was by some form of abdication - which took the form of his own suicide and the murder of almost all of his followers. Jones was all of a piece with the likes of Charles Manson or David Koresh.In view of his increasingly outré behaviour, it was almost inevitable that he should have gravitated towards San Francisco and that he should have become prominent in local politics under the aegis of the well-meaning (but arguably misguided) George Moscone. The film does not mention the close connections between the doomed Leo Ryan and Moscone, nor the imminent assassination of Moscone and Harvey Milk by Dan White. That was unfortunate, because it underscored the strangeness of this remarkable story. However, it is by no means a fatal omission. I would have appreciated some detail on the attitude of the Guyanese authorities to this strange Temple in the jungle. Did the government of Forbes Burnham and Arthur Chung know anything about it and the danger that cult members were in? Did they make any attempt to intervene? I saw this film as part of the 2006 Times/BFI London Film Festival, and it is regrettable that it did not receive more publicity (not least in The Times itself). The story was told dead straight with little of the ostentatious editing that is now so common in documentaries, and is all the more effective for it. The audience left the theatre in something approaching a state of utter desolation - a tribute to the terrible nature of the story, the integrity of the witnesses and the ability of Stanley Nelson and his colleagues.The film contains many scenes (footage of services in People's Temple) that seem joyous - and they are all the more tragic for that. Yet I could never quite tell what was in the eyes of all these doomed worshippers (many of whom were otherwise helpless, lonely and frail). Was it rapture or was it...terror?