Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple (4 Stars)

In the 1960s and 70s, a charismatic, evangelical, visionary preacher named Jim Jones built a huge interracial following, people who wanted to live together in harmony and free of prejudice, and founded a community in Guyana for them all to live in autonomy and peace, called Jonestown. In 1978, he forced them all (909 of them) into the largest mass suicide in almost 2000 years.

The pacing of this documentary is excellent; it gives you a feel of the mounting pressure on all the temple members as the final days approached. You get a sense of Jones’ gradual descent into madness, and his ruthless and psychotic, if not ingenious control he had over the lives of all these people. Those who saw the signs early enough, lived to tell the story, and the few survivors of the massacre give their account of it as well, having the experience of holding a dying person in their arms, and knowing they’re next. Very powerful stuff.

The film isn’t just interviews either. The filmmakers actually got their hands on a lot of archive footage as well. This isn’t for the faint of heart, but definitely worth watching once, for its lesson in what happens when you let one man take too much control of your life.