Mr. Jones

Mr. Jones (2019) tells the true story of the Welsh journalist Gareth Jones, and its subject is the Ukrainian famine of 1932 and 1933, the Holodomor. Jones travels to the Soviet Union in 1933. The western correspondents in Moscow assure him everything is fine. He boards a train without permission, crosses into Ukraine, and writes what he sees: empty villages, people dying of hunger, and grain being trucked out. The real subject is not the famine but its denial. Walter Duranty, the best known western reporter in Moscow, contradicts the story and works to destroy Jones's credibility. Duranty had won a Pulitzer for his Soviet coverage, and that prize has still not been revoked despite campaigns. The film opens with George Orwell writing Animal Farm. This is not decoration: the human character in that book is named Mr Jones, and it has long been suggested that Orwell chose the name for Gareth Jones. Agnieszka Holland is Polish and has no distance from this material; the Ukrainian sections are shot almost without colour. Gareth Jones was killed in Mongolia in 1935, one day before his thirtieth birthday. It runs 119 minutes. Good for: history, journalism films, and political thrillers. Less good for: the starvation scenes are very hard, cannibalism is implied, and the tone is dark throughout.