Introduction
The character of a truth-seeker has always been compelling to a film audience. Nevertheless, in the words of Philip Colley, Gareth Jones’ great-nephew, even though the movie Mr Jones (2019) aimed to tell the story of his great-uncle, many of the facts were distorted. Sensationalizing real events is commonplace in Western entertainment media because it helps capture the audience’s attention and make movies more memorable.
The story of the Holodomor, or the Great Ukrainian Famine (1932-1933), does not need any sensationalizing, as it is terrifying enough and marks a dark page in the history of humankind. In the movie, the audience is presented with a bright and ambitious Welsh reporter, Gareth Jones, eager to visit the Soviet Union to interview Joseph Stalin, the authoritarian leader of the Soviet Union between 1924 and 1953 (Hingley 2023). Jones arrives in the USSR with that very purpose.
Still, around halfway through the film, he realizes that his journalistic call leads him to Ukraine, where the population was subjected to extermination. At the same time, the country’s leadership tried to suppress any information about it. Movies like Mr Jones are essential because, despite some untruths or inconsistencies, they illuminate the dark events in history, no matter how shocking or uncomfortable they are.
Character Portrayal Analysis
The analysis of Colley’s piece on the movie’s criticism revealed that the great-nephew was highly skeptical of Jones’ portrayal of the character. He notes that as a result of fact distortion from the film, Jones was called “a Welsh diplomat who worked for Chamberlain and once interviewed Hitler,” even though he was not, that he “met George Orwell,” even though he did not, and “went to Russia to interview Stalin,” while he did not (Colley n.d.).
The great-nephew of the reporter acknowledges that the filmmakers were transparent about the fact that Gareth did not witness all the events depicted in the movie. However, his figure was used as a vehicle for transferring their version of what happened during the Great Ukrainian Famine. It is implied that Jones was always truthful in his reporting, so all the events he witnesses in the movie must also be truthful. While there is no disputing that the famine occurred and millions died, when watching the movie, it is essential to remember that some artistic liberties were undoubtedly taken.
Jones’ travels depicted in the movie are the third time the journalist visited the Soviet Union. The Soviets formally banned foreign correspondents from entering Ukraine in 1933. Still, Gareth Jones, William Henry Chamberlin, Harry Lang, and Malcolm Muggeridge ignored the restriction and wrote reports on the famine (University of Minnesota 2023).
Gareth is shown securing a ticket to visit Kharkiv, the Ukrainian capital at the time. Instead of traveling there directly and raising suspicions about his intentions, the reporter disembarked south of Belgorod and continued his journey on foot. What he witnesses on his journey is hungry children, cannibalism, entire families dying at home from hunger, people left dead on the sides of the road, fighting for a piece of bread. It was the journalist’s interactions with the peasants that revealed the true nature of the events.
While the film contains many disturbing scenes depicting the famine, the interaction between Jones and a young woman, seconds before they are arrested while waiting for a piece of bread, was highly impactful. In the background, viewers see a large poster depicting Stalin holding a bundle of wheat, conveying the general message of the leader’s generosity. The stark contrast is seen between the propaganda poster and reality.
As starving people gather around a potential source of a small ration of bread, Jones gets into the crowd and asks a young woman how long the hunger has been going on. Gareth reveals that he is a journalist and that his mother has always told him that the chernozem (black soil) native to Ukraine could feed the world, but the people are starving. The woman is blunt in her response and says that ‘they’ are killing people, millions, and that the ‘men’ who ‘came’ thought they could replace the laws of nature. Her insight clearly indicates that the hunger was forced and intentional.
The ‘millions’ moment was the most surprising because, personally, I have never thought of Holodomor as something that affected millions. After watching the movie, I delved deeper into the research on the event and found that the estimated number of famine victims in Ukraine ranged from 3 to 5 million (Applebaum, 2019). The forceful nature of the famine and the number of its victims suggest that Holodomor could be referred to as genocide. The shocking scene when the two men lead a horse-drawn carriage loaded with corpses of famished people and stop to load a dead mother and her living and crying child shows the brutality of the conditions in which the population was placed.
Theme of Holodomor
In general, Holodomor is not as well known as, for instance, the Holocaust. While it is counterproductive to compare and contrast such events, the fact that the famine is not as remembered or publicized speaks volumes about the authoritarian rule in the USSR, which did not have a free press. In the movie, Gareth Jones is perplexed by the fact that people are dying in millions, and no one is speaking about it.
The Holodomor was occurring just around the time when Hitler assumed power in Germany, and the attention of the global community was tied to the Third Reich rather than the USSR. Moreover, the Great Purge (or Great Terror) of 1937 had not yet happened, which meant that the West was largely oblivious to the true nature of the tyranny in Stalin’s state. Moreover, because many countries were starting to prepare for another war mentally and were trying to manage the imminent threat from Nazi Germany, which left little room for the USSR’s internal affairs.
Gareth Jones was among the very few journalists who wrote about the Holodomor, but his reports did not gain much traction until much later. Research into the reasons why the famine was not extensively publicized showed that the Soviets engaged in outright denial and disinformation to cover up the actual state of affairs (HREC n.d.). Moreover, they introduced the phenomenon of Potemkin villages, model villages used to deceive foreign visitors to the USSR and make them believe that the famine accusations were misinformation and slander. However, the articles published by less honest reporters played a significant role in clouding public perception. When Eugene Lyons, a correspondent for United Press International, commented about the failure of Western journalists to cover Holodomor accurately, he said that the “Kremlin, in short, had gotten away with it” (HREC n.d.). An essential point filmmakers make is that the truth in the USSR was not reality but what the ruling party perceived and communicated as reality.
Such findings help explain why the revelation of millions of victims in the movie was so surprising. The events of the Holodomor are of great importance for understanding not only Soviet internal politics but also their influence on the current geopolitical situation surrounding the Russia-Ukraine war. Some of the modern efforts that Russia has implemented when targeting Ukraine include open attacks on residential areas, civilian energy infrastructure, and the country’s ability to export wheat. If one compares Stalin’s methods with Putin’s, some illuminating conclusions can be drawn about Russia’s inability to allow Ukraine to prosper without exerting political influence over it.
Conclusion
Overall, despite some minor inaccuracies, Mr Jones is a must-see movie about the Holodomor, as the filmmakers did a great job of illuminating the underreported events in European history. The story of Gareth Jones is essential because of the role of truth-seekers in shaping the history as we know it today. Remembering and understanding the acts of genocide committed for various reasons, including political and ideological, allows for a better interpretation of modern events. Potentially, by learning from history, humanity is expected to evolve and improve, even though the same mistakes are often repeated.
Bibliography
Applebaum, Anne. 2019. “Holodomor.” Britannica.
Colley, Philip. n.d. “The True Story behind the ‘True Story’ of Mr Jones.” Gareth Jones.
Hingley, Ronald Francis. 2023. “Joseph Stalin.” Britannica.
HREC. 2023. “Holodomor – Denial and Silences.” HREC.
University of Minnesota. 2023. “Holodomor.” CLA.