Mr. Jones (2019)

Directed by: Agnieszka Holland | 119 minutes | biography, drama | Actors: James Norton, Vanessa Kirby, Peter Sarsgaard, Joseph Mawle, Kenneth Cranham, Celyn Jones, Krzysztof Pieczynski, Beata Pozniak, Fenella Woolgar, Martin Bishop, John Edmondson, Michalina Olszanska, Martin Hugh Henley

One chapter of modern European history that has always been grossly overlooked by filmmakers is the Holodomor. In 1932 and 1933, a terrible famine occurred in Ukraine (then called the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic). In the context of Stalin’s ‘five-year plan’, agriculture was fully collectivized. Those who refused to join the collective farming communities or state farms had to give up their entire crop, surrender all their possessions and were left to their own devices. Many were condemned to starvation and died of hardship or disease. Some people disappeared into penal camps or prisons, others were exiled. There was also a great famine in other parts of the Soviet Union at that time. The actual total number of deaths is unknown, but it is estimated that it must have been at least 2.5 million. In the west, people had no idea what was going on in the Soviet Union, because there was no such thing as a free press. Only a few managed to bring the truth to light.

One of them was the young, ambitious Welsh journalist Gareth Jones, who in March 1933 was one of the first to report on the abuses in the Soviet Union. Just under his own name and without any ambiguity. The biographical film ‘Mr. Jones’ (2019) by the experienced Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland. Jones is a textbook example of the heroic reporter who, in a hostile environment, is willing to go to great lengths to uncover the truth. Shortly before leaving for the Soviet Union, Jones reported on the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany and was one of the first foreign journalists to interview Adolf Hitler—a conversation that took place in the Richthofen, “the fastest and most powerful three-engine plane.” from Germany’. He wrote in the Welsh newspaper Western Mail that if the Richthofen had crashed that day, the history of Europe would have been very different. Talk about foresight. In the film, Jones is played by James Norton, who exudes just the right degree of idealism and has a focused and determined look. We see Jones, through his connections with former Prime Minister of Great Britain David Lloyd George (Kenneth Cranham), being sent to Moscow to further investigate an interesting tip from a colleague and possibly question Stalin about his famed five-year plan. But the tipster dies under dubious circumstances before Jones has even reached the Russian capital and the shady New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty, who won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize a year earlier, doesn’t need Jones much. to expect help. Through the British journalist Ada Brooks (Vanessa Kirby) he learns that the Stalin regime is withholding information about the successes of the five-year plan, but she does not dare to reveal more, for fear of reprisals.

So Jones goes to investigate himself. With as much bravado as recklessness, he circumvents the restrictions imposed on foreign journalists in Moscow and, at the risk of his own life, travels to Ukraine, where he finds himself in a terrifying reality. Corpses rotting in the snow, dying farmers who watch despondently as their grain is loaded into large trucks. When he is mistaken for a spy, he barely manages to escape, after which he roams through snowy deserted villages full of lifeless houses, the inhabitants of which lie dead in their beds. Workmen load seemingly impassive lifeless bodies onto a cart. Those who are still alive are so starved and desperate that cannibalism becomes a serious option. In this part of the movie, ‘Mr. Jones’ at his best: gruesome, confrontational, terrifying. The shivers run down your spine when a living but orphaned baby is placed on the death cart. Holland makes effective use of shades of light, draping a picturesque layer of misty varnish over each image, making the wry atrocity stand out even more intensely, as it were. Especially if you contrast these images with the lies and propaganda that are being spread in Moscow, about the ‘happy and proud peasants’ and where there is talk of an ‘efficient agricultural collectivization’. It makes Jones even more determined to get the truth out, but what government dares risk its relations with the Soviet Union?

A realistic sketch of events during or related to World War II and the Holocaust; ‘Mr. Thematically and stylistically, Jones’ fits seamlessly into the oeuvre of the Polish Agnieszka Holland, whose father was Jewish. For debuting screenwriter Andrea Chalupa, the story is even more personal: her grandfather was born on a farm in eastern Ukraine. He survived the Holodomor, but was later arrested and tortured by the secret police. That personal involvement may have clouded Chalupa’s vision as he wrote; everything she wrote about Jones’ experiences in Ukraine distracts from what really matters. Kirby and Sarsgaard are of course excellent actors that you like to watch, and Sarsgaard’s character did play a (dubious) role in the whole, but Chalupa could and should have sharpened her focus. It’s all a bit contrived now, to give the story more body. She even stars George Orwell (Joseph Mawle), who was inspired by the events for his acclaimed dystopian novel Animal Farm (even naming the human protagonist “Mr. Jones”). Somehow it was a nice idea to make the link between Jones and Orwell, but in practice it mainly distracts from the core. Now “Mr. Jones’ is unnecessarily long (140 minutes) and the whole thing seems a bit unbalanced. While Gareth Jones’ brave journalism definitely deserves to be told and his remarkable experiences have lost none of their relevance.