Mr. Jones

Imagine a man who is a cross between George Orwell and Harry Potter. That would be Gareth Jones (James Norton), a real person and the title character in a film by Agnieszka Holland that was presented at this year’s Berlinale. The director sees the Welsh journalist as a noble and modest idealist who will do anything to discover even the most inconvenient facts about the world around him. In Mr. Jones, the title character decides to share with the Western public the truth about the reality of life in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Instead of having the impact he expected, the reports by Jones—one of the few foreigners observing the effects of the Holodomor in Ukraine—lead to serious trouble for the journalist. As is usually the case in Holland’s films, the conventions of historical cinema are used as a pretext in Mr. Jones for a penetrating reflection on the present day. The story of a Welsh reporter from the 1930s is depressingly relevant today at a time of crisis for independent journalism and the growing popularity of fake news.