Product: Jonestown - The Life & Death of Peoples Temple (2006)
Rating: 4.0
Fascinating, yet leaves many unanswered questions
Jonestown / B000MTFFUOI would hazard a guess that the hardest aspect of making a documentary is picking and choosing which material makes the final cut. It's obviously impossible to condense every intriguing detail of the life of Jim Jones and the history of his ill-fated church into a documentary format that won't exceed a length of a couple of hours.Although the subtitle of this documentary is "The Life and Death of Peoples Temple", "Jonestown" would probably be more accurately subtitled as "The Life and Death of Jim Jones". A decent chunk of time is devoted to Jones' early life and childhood, all of which is interesting, although the portions on his early life as a preacher start to feel a little drawn out and focus, in my opinion, a little too hard on the black/white aspect of Jones' churches. (Numerous interview subjects say things like "Jim was really a black preacher" and "The Temple was a black church" and while I understand that these statements are meant to partly convey the unusual integration of the temple as well as the worship style in particular, the narrow scope on race relations in the church seems unnecessary especially since it is not particularly surprising that a disturbed megalomaniac would welcome anyone willing to contribute to his empire, regardless of race. Then again, I can see how this revolutionary aspect could be fascinating to some viewers, depending on your specific historical interests.)As interesting as Jones' childhood and early career are, by necessity that focus on the 'early years' means that less screen time is devoted to the inner workings of the Peoples Temple in its heyday. This is, in my opinion, the documentary's greatest failing - a lot of amazing and shocking information is dispensed rapidly through the middle of the documentary, leaving as many questions as answers. What are we to make of assertions that Jones' insisted he was the 'only heterosexual man' on earth, and that he was sexually involved with the majority of his congregation, regardless of gender? I would like to understand how that worked without many of his lovers becoming jealous or disillusioned; for that matter, I would like to understand why more of the heterosexual, married men didn't find this particular trend a basis for concern. And then there are details like the 'strip board meeting' scene that simply boggles the mind that apparently Jones' influence was so strong that no one walked out of that meeting then and there. Or perhaps they did - most of the 'long' interviews are with ex-cult members who survived the massacre; it would be nice to hear from some of the people who left early on and to understand why they did so.Also of interest is the aspect that the elderly members were encouraged to deed all their property to the temple, in exchange for free assisted living... which was then provided by temple volunteers, allowing Jones to pocket 100% profit - some details on how many people and how much money was involved would be highly interesting.Don't let my criticisms deter you from watching "Jonestown" - the documentary is fascinating, and I learned a great deal about the Peoples Temple thanks to this effort. The production is wonderful and the interviews, voice-overs, and scene cuts are all done very skillfully - this is definitely a high quality documentary. Surprisingly, the tone of the documentary seems fairly neutral and sensitive and refrains from openly or excessively criticizing Jones or the temple members, preferring to let the evidence speak for itself, rather than descending into a morality play, and I do appreciate that - it's nice to see a documentary allow the viewer to come to their own conclusion rather than trying to force an author viewpoint (evil/deranged/sick/misunderstood/victim/etc.) onto us. My only regret is that this documentary couldn't be longer, but since one of the interview subjects has also written a book on the subject, I take the documentary's informational gaps as incentive to read more about this tragic event.~ Ana Mardoll