Product: Jonestown - The Life & Death of Peoples Temple (2006)
Rating: 5.0
One of the Most Horrifying Images of the Past!
Jonestown, Guyana tragedy is still one of those tragedies that scare and fascinate me at the same time. The idea of people willingly drinking cynaide kool aid and dying under the burning sun. This DVD edition of Jonestown does not do enough in my opinion to help understand the situation. Deborah Layton's book, Seductive Poison, helped me gain a better understanding of the absolute horrors of Jonestown and how Jim Jones evolved from a good willing minister to a monster. Cults don't just pop up overnight. Jim Jones reached out to the disadvantaged and vulnerable like a predator stalking his prey. Once he lured them under his spell, he stripped them of their dignity, their finances, their free will, etc. It was like he possessed his followers and controled their outcomes. They were beaten, humiliated, embarrassed, and mistreated. Some who left were considered traitors to the church and the cause. This documentary displayed men and women, black and white, who wanted a society where it was more family. Jonestown became an Orwellian nightmare by catastrophic proportions. Could it have been stopped or prevented? Cults like the Peoples Temple start off well-spirited. The people like the members here felt that Jim who was charismatic and charming the pants of anybody lured them into his web. Once under his web, you were robbed of everything that made you an individual. Jim Jones feasted on the souls and the minds of his followers like a drug addict which he later became. The last day was the most horrifying to see those images of people lying together after drinking the poison. Tim Carter, one of the few survivors, recalled his wife and child drinking the poison and dying. Another survivor recalled laying his wife next to her grandmother on the ground. On November 18, 2008, it will mark 30 years of that tragic day. We forget such tragedies like Jonestown and Pan Am 103. Maybe the American public needs to be reminded of these events to help our future. You have to beware people like Jim Jones. I would have liked to see Stephen Jones, his son, in this documentary. I was glad for the final montage of pictures of those who died. They were murdered. They did not go willingly. After all, many of the followers were simply exhausted. In the interviews here, I didn't realize that the People's Temple Members were overworked, exhausted, and felt guilty for being tired. Exhaustion especially by Jim Jones' orders were sheer torture. Imagine being up for days working for your church while Jim Jones lived like a king but yet his followers did the work and weren't rewarded by him. Layton writes a lot more in her book which I recommend since it brings us to understand how she fell for him like so many other followers. Their loss is our loss in America. A third of the victims were children on November 18, 1978. I was five years old when it happened. I'm still haunted by it. I'm still shocked that a congressman like Leo Ryan was gunned down and the guilt of his death was brought upon the members by Jim Jones. The lies of Jim Jones was just outrageous and hard to believe. Layton writes about the white nights that occurred when Jim Jones called everybody to the Pavillion. The brainwashing was constant and lack of contact to the outside world was non-existent. Deborah Layton was one of the lucky ones to get out but she didn't forget the others including her brother who survived and her mother who died a week before Ryan's visit. They didn't mention Sharon Harris who was one of Jones' righthand zealot followers who killed her three children and herself in Georgetown only because Jones ordered her too. The others didn't in Georgetown that included his sons. There is still so much and there was that haunting letter telling us to keep investigating this tragedy to prevent another one. We are foolish to think that we can't be fooled when we know that smart, intelligent, wise, people are equally fooled as everybody else. Jim Jones was a master predator because he sought people who were vulnerable, insecure, ignored, etc. He preyed on their insecurities, isolation, abandonment worse than any predator could do. He robbed so many people of their lives, their homes, their finances, their health, their minds, their souls, and finally in the end, their lives. By the time, Jim Jones orchestrated his revolutionary protest or the mass murder at the pavillion, he had their souls and minds. Their bodies were just the shell that was carrying them around. It was Jones who dictated what they ate, heard, saw, etc. by then. He created a hell on earth that he masqueraded and sold as paradise. When the people came into Jonestown, they had no idea that it was really based more on the concentration camp during World War II. Only in those camps, people had more freedom than they did in Jonestown. Because once you entered Jonestown, there was no way out. We must not forget the lessons of Jonestown even now as if it was distant history.