I'm one knot, tangled in the heap

Today's matinee screening of Jonestown: The Life And Death of the Peoples Temple at the Red Vic was remarkably well-attended, especially considering that a later show was due to feature the film's director and two actual Jonestown survivors, including Jim Jones Jr. The topic's always been of interest to me, and the local angle is intriguing too, so I made a point of making time for this one. After a tasty, uncrowded, unhurried organic lunch at Bia's, a restaurant I'd walked past for several years but never entered (as well as a pitstop at Amoeba, which set me back $3 for The Kink Kronikles and King Curtis Live At The Fillmore West), I headed into the Red Vic.

The film's narrative and pacing capture the Peoples Temple's transition from what initially seems like a fairly reasonable, progressive organization to a nightmare in the isolation of the South American jungle. Quite frankly, if the 1970 version of Jim Jones presented his ideas to me, I'd say he was on the right track (though I doubt I'd have joined him). When I think of cults I tend to imagine strange scenes: say, New Agey people dressed in robes, touching fingertips and chanting to some sort of sun god. The Peoples Temple, as we see, wasn't like that. It featured Southern-style gospel music and references to Christian symbols. Jones preached racial harmony and brought his communicants to lively anti-war protests. We learn that the Peoples Temple and Jones himself had legitimacy conferred upon them by Walter Mondale, Rosalynn Carter and the city government of San Francisco. Nearly everyone seems levelheaded, sane. Even years after the Temple's terrible end, some survivors seem to view their time in the church somewhat nostalgically.

And yet, well prior to the mass suicide murder, we see that the Peoples Temple was an accident waiting to happen. Jones took advantage of racial tensions, sexually exploited men and women (and, it seems, possibly children), took people's life savings, lied to his supplicants and lived by different rules than his followers. We learn that he killed animals as a child (surprise), although the film doesn't necessarily make a case that Jones was always cold-blooded, megalomaniacal, or sociopathic. It leaves room for the possibility that he was a good-hearted man who gradually became drunk on power, and it largely allows us to discover his psychotic tendencies in stages, as a member of his church might have done during the 1970s.

The horrifying episode in Guyana more or less ends the film. I would have appreciated a little epilogue. We don't find out much about how the survivors made it out of Jonestown, and the film omits key facts such as the existence of a second plane on the airstrip. (One unimpressed reviewer notes that the film doesn't explicitly say that the victims drank poisoned Kool-Aid -- or Flavor-Aid as the case may be!) But the closing sequence, during the credits, does bring home the unimaginable magnitude of the disaster, which I had a hard time wrapping my head around up to that point. People left the theater in silence; most seemed unsettled and shaken stepping out onto the sidewalk scene, busy with shoppers bathed in late-afternoon sunlight.

Jonestown benefits from Jones' own megalomania, because apparently he documented his own rise obsessively on film. Much of the awful climax of his story was filmed by NBC cameramen, and the consumption of the poison was captured on audiotape. Director Stanley Nelson had a lot of existing material to assemble, but his own contributions are what makes Jonestown into a cohesive story. The interviews are deeply revealing, and add perspective that can only come from years of trying to lead a normal life following a strange and terrible experience. Some people seem embarrassed. No one seems proud.

Jonestown is already being touted as an Oscar contender. I would guess that Al Gore's film is still the favorite -- and of course, after seeing For Your Consideration how could I possibly care about award culture anymore? -- but it'd be nice to see Jonestown receive the wider audience that comes with a nomination or a trophy. And I'm looking forward to the Balboa Theater's "Doc Days" already.

[Two notes of local interest: The film does not tell you that the People's Temple was located on Geary next to the Fillmore, where the post office now stands. And it does not mention that Mayor George Moscone, who appears in the film for about a minute, was assassinated just two weeks after the massacre in Jonestown.]