Jonestown:Paradise lost

After re-watching "the Scientology episode" of South Park this week it got me to thinking how cracked out Scientology really is. Tonight Nick and I had a brief discussion about it and funny enough the People's Temple, led by The Rev. Jim Jones came up in our conversation. Which led me to remember a "docudrama" I watched on the History Channel last year....Jonestown: Paradise lost. So messed up but such a great documentary.



Director:Tim Wolochatiuk
Writer:Jason Sherman

I give it a 4 outta 5 hi fives cause it's a messed up story, and the survivor stories really add to it and remind you that this ACTUALLY happened and that people ACTUALLY believe in, and get sucked into these sort of cult's. I'm sorry but I'm not willing to end my life for anything or anyone. PERIOD, unless of course I would have to live it in a total vegetative state, but that's whole other story....(I know there's more to it than that, I'm just sayin'....)

Synopsis taken from: HERE

“Jonestown: Paradise Lost” methodically clocks through the cult’s final days, when Representative Leo Ryan of California’s 11th District arrived in Guyana with reporters and family members of People’s Temple followers to investigate continued complaints about Mr. Jones’s mistreatment of his supplicants. Just as the group was to leave, Mr. Jones’s gunmen killed Mr. Ryan and the defectors he was taking back to the United States. Cult members killed themselves later that day.

If Stephan Jones, a trim man on the youthful side of middle age, is mesmerizing to watch, it is because he does not seem to carry the weight of ambivalence with him. He has never grieved for his father, he says dispassionately; he simply doesn’t see the point. “I knew, I had known for a long time, that my father was nuts,” Mr. Jones says.

One thousand questions go unasked of him. In another instance, Mr. Jones says, “Every hour of the day, Jim Jones knew he was a fraud.” At that moment it might have behooved the interviewer to prod with a gentle question like: “Really? How did you know?” But such questions hang in the air like a dense fog.

Mr. Jones is not the only survivor who appears to tell his story, but what drives “Paradise Lost” at the expense of an inquiring spirit is that hallmark of the contemporary television documentary: the re-enactment. It is one thing to recreate the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, but quite another to deploy the technique to depict events for which there are interesting living witnesses, not to mention archival footage (used only sparingly here).

What is the purpose of casting an actor as Jim Jones? The effect, I can tell you, is a reminder that in our collective imagination all cult leaders end up looking like Elvis.