The movie revealed a lot of the circumstances of what went on at Jonestown in the late 70s, but in my opinion came short of portraying Jim Jones' eerie charisma and demonic persuasiveness convincingly. Unluckily, it suffered too much from the generic soap-opera-ized ensemble cast syndrome. We don't really get to connect with the characters of Jonestown and their plights because 1) for any reader of Jonestown history, the characters are not actually true-life victims of Jonestown, but composites of victims; and 2) even if the characters were true-life, we don't see enough of any of the characters and their personal stories--including Jim Jones himself--to relate to him all that well.
The movie tried earnestly--and too hard--to cram too many artificial composite characters into its framework to condense the personal stories of many into a relatively short and unforgiving miniseries. The tragedy of Jonestown could have taken up volumes of heartbreaking personal stories of the 900 who perished. To give the directors and writers of this miniseries the benefit of the doubt, recapturing the immense horror that was Jonestown was probably an undoable task for a 4-hour miniseries.
In her book "Seductive Poison," Deborah Layton gives an accurate (and deeply personal) account of life at Jonestown that totally engrossed me from Page 1. I recommend this book over the miniseries for anyone who wants to know just how destructive Jim Jones' cult was to the many lives he affected (and helped to end).
The movie tried earnestly--and too hard--to cram too many artificial composite characters into its framework to condense the personal stories of many into a relatively short and unforgiving miniseries. The tragedy of Jonestown could have taken up volumes of heartbreaking personal stories of the 900 who perished. To give the directors and writers of this miniseries the benefit of the doubt, recapturing the immense horror that was Jonestown was probably an undoable task for a 4-hour miniseries.
In her book "Seductive Poison," Deborah Layton gives an accurate (and deeply personal) account of life at Jonestown that totally engrossed me from Page 1. I recommend this book over the miniseries for anyone who wants to know just how destructive Jim Jones' cult was to the many lives he affected (and helped to end).