Mr. Jones is a 2019 Polish-British-Ukrainian historical drama about the British journalist Gareth Jones
(1905-1935), directed by Agnieszka Holland.
In 1933, Gareth Jones (James Norton) is an ambitious young journalist who has gained some renown for his interview with Adolf Hitler. Thanks to his connections to David Lloyd George (Kenneth Cranham), the former Prime Minister, he is able to get official permission to travel to the Soviet Union. Jones intends to try to interview Josef Stalin and find out more about the Soviet Union's economic expansion and its apparently successful five-year development plan. Restricted to Moscow, one of his contacts directs him to something big currently happening in the Ukrainian SSR...
Unrelated with the 2013 horror movie with the same title or the Indiana Jones franchise.
This film provides examples of:
- Actually Pretty Funny: At an orgy organized by Duranty, Gareth attempts to leaves early and encounters a (naked) Duranty, who blame him for not liking the party and being a dull person. Gareth retorts his life isn't so dull, because he is currently chatting with a naked Pulitzer Prize-winner. Duranty laughs.
- Artistic License – History: While depiction of acts of cannibalism during the Holodomor is Truth in Television, the real Gareth didn't do it during his trip. This scene actually caused an outcry from his family.
- Bavarian Fire Drill: For his trip to Soviet Union, Gareth pretends he's sent by Lloyd George (he worked for him, but has been recently fired for financial reasons), falsifying a letter of recommendation written for him by Lloyd George in order to make it look like he still works for him. Subverted with the effects this has on the final act. Once Gareth reports his findings in Ukraine to Lloyd George, the latter isn't happy at all, as Gareth's expedition was solely decided from his own initiative, his arrest in a forbidden area (Ukraine is off-limits to foreigners at the time) could create a diplomatic crisis with a country that the UK is now trying to befriend, and the revelation he intends to make would only worsen said hypothetical diplomatic crisis.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Gareth wants to get a hot scoop about the real situation in the Soviet Union. Not only he gets to see first-hand the Holodomor, something that keeps haunting him for the rest of his life, but nobody believes him and ultimately the film implies his death few years later was orchestrated by Soviet agents.
- Book Ends: In Gareth's first scene, he gives hot revelations about the Nazi regime to a group of British politicians, who don't believe him. At the end of the movie, Gareth publishes hot revelations about the Soviet regime in the British press, and the British public doesn't believe him.
- Cassandra Truth: Nobody in the United Kingdom wants to hear about Stalin organizing a famine in Ukraine. There's political reasons in this, as the United Kingdom is seeking an alliance with the Soviet Union, both economical (the Soviet Union doesn't seem to suffer from the 1929 economic crisis) and political/military (against Hitler).
- Chekhov's Gunman: The British engineer Gareth meets in Moscow at the beginning of the movie is later arrested by the Soviets under the accusation of espionage, then used by the Soviet regime along with others as a bargaining chip to force Gareth not to reveal his discoveries in Ukraine.
- Commie Land: Much of the film is set in the Soviet Union during 1933. Moscow is shown as drab, oppressive and with people constantly under surveillance. Ukraine is far worse, as there's mass death by famine which the government is trying to keep a secret.
- Crapsack World: Well, this is a film mostly set in Stalinist-era Soviet Union. If the atmosphere of paranoia and constant surveillance during the scenes in Moscow didn't convince you, wait for the time Gareth reaches Ukraine...
- Creepy Children Singing: Starving Ukrainian children surround Gareth and sing (with a dissonant calm tone) a creepy song about Stalin being the organizer of this tragedy, and people eating their children after turning mad because of starvation. They later reappear (with an extract of the same song) during a hallucination sequence. A few notes from the same song are heard again much later, during a scene where Gareth encounters children in his hometown in Wales.
- Decoy Protagonist: The first character to appear onscreen isn't Gareth Jones but George Orwell. Orwell doesn't have much screen time and only interacts with Gareth a couple of time. In most of his scenes, including the first one, he's alone and working on Animal Farm.
- Downer Ending: The Holodomor revelation was not believed and the famine didn't stop. The ending panel tells how Gareth died one year later, likely murdered by the Soviet secret police while traveling in Inner Mongolia.
- Famed In-Story: At the start of the story, Gareth is already famous for managing to interview Hitler while flying aboard Hitler's private plane.
- The Famine: What Gareth discovers in Ukraine, caused by the Soviet authorities forcibly taking all grain produced in Ukraine to export them, making the Soviet Union look richer than it actually is. This is a real event referred to as "the Holodomor" (the Ukrainian for "death by famine").
- Foregone Conclusion: As the Holodomor is an infamous historical event from the Stalinian era, most viewers with some knowledge of the era will immediately guess what Gareth will find once he goes to Ukraine. And that's not counting the fact Gareth Jones is a real person.
- Foreshadowing:
- In Gareth's first scene in the movie, he's making a report about his interview of Hitler to a group of British politicians, and they don't believe him when he tells he got information from Goebbels about the Nazis intending to wage war in Europe. In the end, when Gareth reports about the famine in Ukraine, the British public doesn't believe him either.
- When Gareth rides a train to Ukraine among natives, he snacks on an orange while the other passengers are ravenously staring at him. He then tosses the orange peelings on the floor, then incredulously watches as some of the Ukrainians pick up the peelings and eat them. It's the first explicit clue a famine is raging in Ukraine.
- In the same scene, Gareth tries to buy the coat off one of the train passengers to acquire a disguise. The man refuses the money (he tells him money is worthless here), but barters his coat for a loaf of bread. Another clue about the famine.
- Genre Shift: The film starts as an espionage thriller, then turns into a horror movie once Gareth enters Ukraine.
- The Ghost: Stalin is referenced often, the movie is set in Soviet Union during his regime, and Gareth's initial reason to travel there is an attempt to interview him, but he never appears in person.note
- The Great Depression: The film is set in 1933-1934.
- Hanlon's Razor: In-Universe. Orwell is initially unsure whether the famine is deliberately engineered by the Soviet authorities, or if it's the consequence of poor logistics and organization in Ukraine. Modern scholarships indicates that while there were legitimate shortages of food, Stalinist authorities intentionally exacerbated the situation with their continuing to extract quotas from already starving people, their refusal to send and ask for aid, and their efforts to keep peasants from reaching slightly better off cities. The concurrent murder of Ukrainian artists and writers and suppression of Ukrainian identity indicates that the mass murder was intentional.
- Heel–Face Turn: Lyons, one of the reporters who follows Duranty's lead, eventually goes on to denounce Duranty, himself and the journalists in general for their conduct in recant to Jones report.
- Hero with Bad Publicity: At the end of the movie, in Britain Gareth has become infamous, widely believed to be a liar who slandered the Soviet Union.
- Historical Domain Character: The movie's characters include various real persons, including Gareth Jones, David Lloyd George, George Orwell, Walter Duranty, Maxim Litvinov, and William Randolph Hearst. Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler never appear in person, but they are referenced often.
- Historical Hero Upgrade: Hearst is a controversed figure in real life, widely viewed as building his press empire on fake news and yellow press (his fake news notably contributed to start the Spanish-American War). In the movie, he's merely an ally of Gareth who publishes articles about the truth in Ukraine. However, this adds to the public perception of Jones' revelations: people don't trust them, because Hearst printed them.
- Insult Backfire: Duranty tells Gareth Jones that, but for his naivete (i.e., his refusal to doctor the truth), he could have made a fine journalist. Being told that you will never be Duranty's type of journalist is perhaps the highest professional compliment a reporter can get.
- Intrepid Reporter: Gareth manages to travel unsupervised through Ukraine and uncovers something big.
- Karma Houdini: Walter Duranty parroted the Soviet official truth and carried on doing this after Gareth's reveals. According to the ending panel, he died peacefully and of natural causes, a couple decades later, without even losing the Pulitzer Price he earned thanks to his misleading articles.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: Or rather "Make It Look Like A Random Homicide Unrelated With Our Current Government Conspiracy". Paul Kleb, a contact of Gareth in Moscow, is murdered before having the time to give much information to Gareth (in his last scene, Kleb was having a phone conversation with Gareth and was about to tell him to start investigating something, but the secret police agent who was monitoring the conversation interrupts it at a critical time). He officially is shot by thieves, but several characters have doubts.
- The Needs of the Many: Duranty blandly defends the Soviet Union's policies this way, saying "You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs".
- No Antagonist: The villain of the story is Stalin's regime, without any character to personally incarnate it (or alternatively it could be argued that there's too many equally complicit people for there to be one antagonist). Stalin himself is The Ghost.
- No Party Like a Donner Party: One of the horror scenes witnessed by Gareth in Ukraine. Three emaciated children welcome Gareth to their home and he shares their meal, an unspecified meat. When Gareth asks what kind of meat it is, they answer with the name of their elder brother. And Gareth assumed they said their brother hunted some forest animal, which they then cooked. Later, Gareth leaves the house and finds a frozen, emaciated corpse lying in the outside, with some flesh carved up from his leg... Cannibalism was Truth in Television during the Holodomor.
- Oh, Crap!: Gareth is eventually sent to Ukraine, with a Soviet official in charge of guiding him (officiously, to make sure Gareth doesn't discover something he shouldn't). During the train ride, Gareth manages to get rid of him. In the scene where the man understands Gareth ditched him and is nowhere to be found, the official's face looks absolutely dejected.
- One Degree of Separation: Gareth is a former employee of Lloyd George, he becomes an acquaintance of George Orwell during the course of the movie, and William Randolph Hearst happens to have a second home in Gareth's town in Wales.
- Protagonist Title: The movie is a biopic of the journalist Gareth Jones.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: William Randolph Hearst. He's understandably pissed off when Gareth trespasses in his house to meet him, but gives Gareth "30 seconds" to explain what he exactly wants. Which is enough to catch his attention when Gareth tells him he witnessed first-hand what happens in Ukraine and that the famine isn't a mere rumor. Hearst then publishes articles about the tragedy, but it doesn't do much to influence the public.
- Sadistic Choice: After being eventually caught by the Soviets during his unauthorized trip in Ukraine, Gareth is released by Soviet authorities who force him to remain silent by telling him they won't release six other prisoners (six British engineers working in Moscow and accused of espionage) if he reveals what he witnessed in Ukraine. In summary, he had a dilemma between choosing to save six people (some of which he personally met), or save millions of people. Orwell convinces him to choose the latter option.
- Sanity Slippage: At one point in Ukraine, while alone in a forest, Gareth hallucinates dozen of children surrounding him while standing far from him, while the creepy song is played again.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: Not only do few people believe Gareth's revelations about the secret famine in Ukraine, but trying to discredit him was for naught, too. The British government choose to not believe the truth about the Holodomor in order to maintain an alliance with Stalin against Hitler; in 1939, after attempts to include Poland and France in that alliance failed, Hitler and Stalin signed a non-aggression pact.
- Shout-Out: Gareth's story is several times interrupted by short scenes of George Orwell working on Animal Farm.
- Too Desperate to Be Picky: The movie is set during a historical famine in Ukraine, and features scenes of starving people eating orange peelings, tree bark, raw grains spilled from a bag fallen on the ground, and even the flesh of their relatives.
- Viewers Are Geniuses: Downplayed, but still present. The story still works perfectly fine on a basic level without any prior knowledge, but the more the viewer already knows about 30s Soviet Union, Holomodor, Gareth Jones personally or his reporting, the more extra bonus in form of various details are spread throughout the film.
- Villain of Another Story: Hitler and his Nazis are the threat everyone is focusing on, which allows the Soviets crimes to pass by relatively unnoticed.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: How Gareth reacts once he understands he just ate cooked human flesh cut from the corpse of his starving hosts' brother. Said vomit is the "chunky, with stomach contents" variant (filmed back lit).
- You Can't Make an Omelette...: Duranty uses this analogy to defend the brutal policies of the Soviet Union.
