Product: Jonestown - The Life & Death of Peoples Temple (2006)
Rating: 5.0
Prophesy of death
Two films came out this year on Jonestown, the Discovery Channel, "Jonestown Paradise Lost" and "Jonestown: The Life & Death of Peoples Temple." The former presented actors in segments and this was a true documentary. This was a horrific time in the history of the Bay Area when one week after Jonestown both Mayor George Mascone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were shot and killed. The great tragedy in both events was the good intentions that caring people can make to change the world and the vicious response to such an effort. The people of Jonestown shared a vision of a world free from racism and the coming together of loving people for a united good. What happened to them during those years of declining paranoia from the demented mind of Jim Jones is by far the most compelling part of this Greek tragedy. I knew a woman who met Jim Jones and was recruited to go to Guyana. She was like many of the residents, a Black woman, religious and elderly. Her family did not go and they were spared. There were many people recruited to go to Jonestown. Most turned it down. I think many who went were either lost to the cause or so entwined in the thinking of Jim Jones that they could not see the storm ahead. To gain a deeper prospective, read "Deadly Poison," by Deborah Layton. This film gives an excellent overview on a very complex subject and I feel it is an excellent introduction to those who were too young to know about Jim Jones or were somehow not aware of this tragedy. I might add that I was in a cult for a short time and it is unbelievable how easy it is to be sucked in and I am not a weak minded person. Isolated and removed from any outside perspective, it is no wonder that they did what they did. I do think that the most horrific deed in this horrible event was the act of a mother, who was in the capital Georgetown, and who slit the throats of her three children and then her own. She was not even there but she had come under his spell. All in all, quite an unbelievable story.