True story drama from Oscar-nominated director Agnieszka Holland about about the journalist who broke the news to the western media of the famine in the Soviet Union in the early '30s. Nominated for the top prize at Berlin.
"In March 1933, Welsh journalist Gareth Jones takes a train from Moscow to Kharkov in the Ukraine. He disembarks at a small station and sets off on foot on a journey through the country where he experiences at first hand the horrors of a famine. Everywhere there are dead people, and everywhere he goes he meets henchmen of the Soviet secret service who are determined to prevent news about the catastrophe from getting out to the general public. Stalin’s forced collectisisation of agriculture has resulted in misery and ruin; the policy is tantamount to mass murder. Supported by Ada Brooks, a New York Times reporter, Jones succeeds in spreading the shocking news in the West, thereby putting his powerful rival, the Pulitzer Prize-winning, pro-Stalin journalist Walter Duranty, firmly in his place." (Berlin International Film Festival)
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Mr Jones is not a grand tragedy in the manner of David Lean, choking the horror with the fumes of melodrama. Rather, Holland (In Darkness) tells the small story of Jones’ chilly trek into the maw: blasted empty crop fields, shuffling ragbound peasants, a shocking encounter with several children who reveal – horrifyingly – how they have survived.
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Some might also wonder if a trimmer, more focused, version of Mr. Jones lives inside its slightly bloated 141 mins running time. Small quibbles for what is otherwise a gripping history lesson.
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Mr Jones is a historical film done well. It is compelling, engrossing and shocking, but never bleak or morbid.
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Anchored by a steadfast James Norton, Mr. Jones doesn’t grip as it should, but is a timely, well-made reminder about the importance of reporting the truth when the world doesn’t believe you.
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It's supposed to give Mr Jones some cultural context, but it reeks of desperation.
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A far stricter edit of this baggy 140-minute film would solve a number of its problems, but the good news is that "Mr. Jones" gets better and more soul-stirring as it goes along.
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An intrepid crusader against actually fake news, he's very much a hero for our divided moment - you just wish his own biopic stopped fussing and stepped out of his way.
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A fiery epic paying further tribute to this forgotten figure of history, and stoking the coals of remembrance as the forces of authoritarianism are, as they say, back in the news.
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[A] riveting core story is bookended by anesthetising bloat, in a densely cluttered treatment by first-time screenwriter Andrea Chalupa that simply doesn't know when to make a point and move on.
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The flat denial of an eyewitness account of famine makes one wonder about the Twitterstorm it would provoke in this age.
Full reviewMr. Jones (2019) is available to stream in New Zealand now on Google Play and Apple TV and Academy On Demand and AroVision.
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