This short film is a rare glimpse on the People's Temple Church, its leader Jim Jones and the crowd five years before the Jonestown tragedy where more
than 900 people committed suicide on an act of protest against the persecution they suffered back in California and also from its defectors who wanted to get back
home after spending harsh times while living in Guyana. If you're here reading this you probably know a lot about the mass suicide, its aftermath and stuff. Now,
here's a documentary that chronicles a little bit about People's Temple previous to the tragedy - sort of interesting if we consider the level and ammount of
information given to it since it was all on the hands of Jones. So, here's a response to the media and its allegations and accusations to Jones about the abuse he
committed to the church members, which were escalating to a point where he couldn't find ways to defend himself so he bought himself a way out by taking his church
and its members all the way to South America where the initial paradise-like place became a hell of all sorts.
I'm giving thumbs down to the project not because of its makers - they had their fault by not digging a lot more or possibly because they were too close to Jones that the only alternative was to give the man the benefit of the doubt and support him all the way - but I found it a unsatisfactory project where we see some church members all praising divine love and the man at the same time they seemed uncomfortable with what they were doing. With those images in mind one may wonder: why they didn't try to get away from that place as quick as possible? Those who escaped before Jonestown were the lucky ones. And I bet some of the people who appeared in this piece died there. And what bothers most is that the disclaimer says that there was something wrong with the church and its leader, the media had the story but not fully since there was secrecy with Jim Jones but the man himself never finds a way to explain, to counter-attack those ugly claims. He just appears talking about his spiritual program which is good and there's preaching about the evils of media people; or bits where he's being tender to animals (or trying hard as well, I mean, that goat was really terrified of him to the point of running away from him. I had seen that same image in another documentary).
On a final analysis, "People's Temple" serves a purpose to instigate viewers in trying to imagine alternative realities to those poor folks. Seeing what we saw and knowing about the reality of cults, televangelists and similars in the years that followed, can we really predict that those jolly happy folks praying to God and devoting themselves to a cause they find as beautiful and a salvation for that community would it end the way it ended? How deep are the lens that captured the essence of those people and does it reveal a truth underneath of people being coerced to do things they didn't want or they were actually happy to be there? It's all room for conjectures, that's why the movie works in a way. But for the most part, if this were to be considered as a case for Jones defense, then it's a near disaster that didn't cleared the man of anything wrong - we know about spankings, abuse, drug use and Jonestown's White Nights which consisted in waking people in the middle of the night almost as an army drill exercise where the group members were to simulate a mass suicide. He just couldn't be trusted and the images speak volumes. 5/10.
I'm giving thumbs down to the project not because of its makers - they had their fault by not digging a lot more or possibly because they were too close to Jones that the only alternative was to give the man the benefit of the doubt and support him all the way - but I found it a unsatisfactory project where we see some church members all praising divine love and the man at the same time they seemed uncomfortable with what they were doing. With those images in mind one may wonder: why they didn't try to get away from that place as quick as possible? Those who escaped before Jonestown were the lucky ones. And I bet some of the people who appeared in this piece died there. And what bothers most is that the disclaimer says that there was something wrong with the church and its leader, the media had the story but not fully since there was secrecy with Jim Jones but the man himself never finds a way to explain, to counter-attack those ugly claims. He just appears talking about his spiritual program which is good and there's preaching about the evils of media people; or bits where he's being tender to animals (or trying hard as well, I mean, that goat was really terrified of him to the point of running away from him. I had seen that same image in another documentary).
On a final analysis, "People's Temple" serves a purpose to instigate viewers in trying to imagine alternative realities to those poor folks. Seeing what we saw and knowing about the reality of cults, televangelists and similars in the years that followed, can we really predict that those jolly happy folks praying to God and devoting themselves to a cause they find as beautiful and a salvation for that community would it end the way it ended? How deep are the lens that captured the essence of those people and does it reveal a truth underneath of people being coerced to do things they didn't want or they were actually happy to be there? It's all room for conjectures, that's why the movie works in a way. But for the most part, if this were to be considered as a case for Jones defense, then it's a near disaster that didn't cleared the man of anything wrong - we know about spankings, abuse, drug use and Jonestown's White Nights which consisted in waking people in the middle of the night almost as an army drill exercise where the group members were to simulate a mass suicide. He just couldn't be trusted and the images speak volumes. 5/10.
