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Agnieska Holland’s Mr. Jones is stunningly visceral, emotionally impactful and unfortunately…dialogically vacuous. The film opens on a younger George Orwell narrating the writing process that lead to his Animal Farm, a masterful allegory of the horrors of the Soviet regime in Ukraine. Rather poignantly, he says: “I wanted to tell a story so simply, it could be understood by anyone” and with that I see the film’s singular, glaring flaw…it was told too simply.
Tackling a subject matter with such heart-wrenching potency as the Holodomor famine of 1932-33 deserves the utmost authenticity in its storytelling. It need not be ladened with Hollywood sensationalism, melodramatic moments of triumph or heroic despair. For the most part, Mr. Jones effectively avoids this through brilliant visual storytelling. However, too often I found myself disengaged with Gareth Jones’ (James Norton) plight; it seemed almost insensitive to show with such pathos his own temporary starvation, when compared to the long term devastation endured by the true sufferers of the famine.
The first half of the film was baiting a cynic’s game of ‘catch the exposition’, as it chose to tell its story through the script and not the camera. As filmmakers and film lovers alike, we must believe wholeheartedly in the intelligence of the audience. Too often films such as Mr. Jones simply negate this glaring truth and fall prey to the plight of over(t) explanation. Norton’s performance was impassioned but felt laboured at times. Again, I could not help but read his pain as disingenuous in the midst of such unfathomable tragedy. Peter Sarsgaard’s Walter Duranty was savagely reserved as the New York Times’ chief journalist in Moscow. He portrayed his moral degradation with nuance, a victim of the crippling arrested development of his circumstances. Ada (Vanessa Kirby) seemed incomplete, her relationship with Jones was awkward at best, and completely unnecessary at worst.
With all that being said, by no means did I leave the cinema feeling Mr. Jones was a bad film. Admittedly, on first inspection one would be forgiven for assuming this soviet, whistler-blower epic was just another addition to the canon of ‘emphatically empathetic’ war films. But there came a point where things began to turn…and the cinematic cogs cranked into motion. Holland makes a decisive tonal shift in the second half of this film, gifting her audience with all the vibrancy and sorrow that a camera lens can absorb. I felt reinvigorated by the stunning montage sequences, with their fast intersected cuts and mind-bending mirror shots. Not to mention the gorgeous yet deeply unsettling cinematography, depicting the sparse Ukrainian countryside. Furthermore, the intertextuality of Orwell played well, never seeming too forced, and smart use of symbolism helped progress the story along (when Stalin’s Gold, read wheat). Lastly, the film slowly strips away colour with such subtlety, I barely noticed it was gone until it’s thrusted back upon our retinas with the electrifying orange tint of a mandarin. In this simple yet masterful move, we as an audience unwittingly make the connection of colour with food…and the absence thereof with famine.
Ultimately, Mr. Jones is an excellent film with a lacklustre story. By this, I mean the film is visually and aurally engaging, but jarringly pedestrian in its storytelling. Had the platitudes of stereotypical politicians been swapped out for artistic shots of the countryside, or the irrelevant side plots been replaced by a sensitive focus on the victims of the famine, this film would have been a standout contender for best picture. Unfortunately, for me, this film was simply another case of too little too late.
Mr. Jones is released in Irish cinemas February 7.
