Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple
My girlfriend the documentary lover rented this one. She was telling me it was about that cult that took the poison Kool-Aid which I thought I knew about. Somehow in my head I had misattributed the poison Kool-Aid idea to the Heaven's Gate cult. She corrected me and told me it wasn't them. The only other image I had of strange Kool-Aid was The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test which I knew had something to do with Ken Kesey and lots of psychedelic drugs. I guess Kool-Aid gets credits for lots of different things that maybe it shouldn't.
When I sat down and watched this documentary I couldn't believe how uninformed I had been on such a tragic event in recent history. There are of course so many questions surrounding how something like this could have occurred and the movie does a good job at getting as many angles and direct viewpoints as possible. I couldn't believe some of the footage and audio clips that existed. If you rent the DVD, make sure you watch the special features too because there's some info about how some people escaped the forced suicide that is pretty harrowing as well.
I'm not sure what kind of charisma Jim Jones had to amass this kind of thing, but it seemed clear that once people were in it was difficult for them to get out. From the anecdotes of the man's behavior, he clearly thought himself some kind of God. He was a false profit and even though I guess the church was supposed to be Christian they hardly ever talked about Christ. It was all about Jim Jones and what a great man he supposedly was. Maybe false profits are easier to spot from the outside than on the inside???
Rating: 9/10