Mr. Jones Press Book
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MR. JONES PRESS BOOK “Powerful. Bold and heartfelt” "One of the most powerful films at “James Norton brings his A-game to this year’s Berlinale…a fiery epic" this film, giving a muscular, “James Norton stars in a sympathetic performance” breakthrough leading role” “A picture with sinew and strength” “Holland directs the film with a whomping energy that…is incredibly powerful” "Compelling (...) Soul-stirring" "A gripping film that needs to be "James Norton’s plucky, deeply seen" invested performance" "Haunting, symphonic sequence for sheer emotional impact and narrative intensity" "James Norton is terrific as Gareth Jones" "A mighty drama" "(Vanessa) Kirby as always is a magnetic presence" "A beautiful film" "Technically impeccable" "The story it tells is so strong" "The central story packs enough weight, both narratively and emotionally, to make this essential for outlets on the cusp of "Extremely powerful" art-house and quality mainstream" "An eye-opening, utterly "A voyage drama that’s executed engrossing and urgent piece of fine impressionistically" filmmaking" "Mr. Jones is impressive in almost every single way. Holland’s direction “Sheer beauty” is first-rate, the pacing never sluggish and the images are simply stunning” “Norton is superb in the title role – a career-making turn and shines bright in "Holland launches one of her most every scene. Vanessa Kirby also compelling efforts in years" dazzles (...) while Saarsgard neatly nearly steals the whole show as Duranty, his best performance for absolutely ages" "Agnieszka Holland’s moving "James Norton takes on the role of biopic Mr. Jones was a highlight of Jones with convincing charm" the competition line-up" "The bold style of director "With a magnificent performance Agnieszka Holland, infusing a bleak by Norton and a deliciously ripe turn moment of history with surprising from Peter Sarsgaard, Holland has verve" unearthed a too-little-known story and presents it beautifully" "Much to be admired in Agnieszka Holland’s Mr. Jones…featuring a "A compelling narrative...strong stand-out performance by James pacing" Norton as the eponymous lead" "James Norton is an infinitely watchable leading man whose nuanced, emotionally-charged performance conveys the titular journalist’s doggedness and heart and contributes largely to the film’s impact" "A harrowing tale…James Norton gives a convincing turn as Welsh journalist Gareth Jones" “A truly amazing tale which deserves to be told" REVIEWS Mr Jones review – newsman's heroic journey into a Soviet nightmare **** By Peter Bradshaw – 11th February 2019 Agnieszka Holland’s powerful drama stars James Norton as the real-life Welsh journalist who uncovered Stalin’s genocidal famine in Ukraine Agnieszka Holland’s Mr Jones is a bold and heartfelt movie with a real Lean- ian sweep. First-time screenwriter Andrea Chalupa has been inspired by her grandfather from eastern Ukraine to script this forthright, valuable drama about Stalin’s genocidal famine there, and the courageous Welsh journalist Gareth Jones who first brought it to the world’s attention in the 1930s. This was despite real personal danger in journeying there covertly – and the subsequent disparagement of Stalin’s lickspittle New York Times correspondent in Moscow, Walter Duranty, a man whom posterity has revealed to be a singularly useless idiot. James Norton brings his A-game to this film, giving a muscular, sympathetic performance as Jones, the idealist intellectual and man of action from Barry in Wales, who has a liking for reciting the medieval Welsh poem The Battle of the Trees and never removes his sweetly owlish spectacles. Peter Sarsgaard is the creepy Duranty and Joseph Mawle has a recurring cameo as George Orwell who was said to be inspired by Jones’s work and might even have named “Mr Jones”, the proprietor of Animal Farm, after him. Jones and Orwell don’t appear to have met in person, but the film imagines a lunch encounter, based on the fact that they shared a London literary agent: Leonard Moore. The movie has also created what appear to be fictional invention composites: chiefly a colleague of Duranty’s called Ada Brooks, played by Vanessa Kirby (Princess Margaret from the Netflix series The Crown). Holland’s film begins slowly, even unassumingly as young Jones – having already made a splash by interviewing Hitler – uses his London government contacts with David Lloyd George (Kenneth Cranham) to get official permissions to travel to the Soviet Union, on a mission to interview Stalin and discover the truth about the USSR’s colossal economic expansion and its apparently triumphant five-year plan. At first, Jones is restricted to Moscow, condemned to hang around the louche and cynical journo-expat scene presided over there by Duranty. But then he escapes to make a dangerous and deeply unofficial trip to Ukraine, which is where his nightmare begins. At first, the movie is weirdly like The Third Man, with Jones as the Holly Martins figure, the writer in a strange town, having been promised something interesting by someone who is disturbingly no longer around. But by the end of the film it is more like Heart of Darkness. He befriends Ada (Kirby) who wearily tolerates the secret service man following her around as her “big brother”, and Jones is unnerved by a man at one of Duranty’s creepy parties saying that the ennui- stricken hedonistic atmosphere is like Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death. When Jones arrives in the desolate, snowy wastes of eastern Ukraine, he finds out the truth about what Stalin is doing – and perhaps the fact that this is still not well known adds to the horror. There is an excellent and disturbing scene in which Jones is confronted by five tiny children in snowy woodland who sing an eerie song to him about Stalin, and about how cold and hungry and yet loyal they are. It has a sinister, hypnotic effect. Jones is to become tormented by hunger, even gnawing at tree bark. Finally a thin-faced family share their supper with him, which turns out to be the worst horror of all. The movie is partly about Jones’s personal nightmare and his anguish when he was at first disbelieved. But it is also about his final vindication, which perhaps doesn’t have the same power although it’s a necessary part of the story. Holland’s movie really lets rip in the final act, the ordeal in the wasteland of Ukraine. She has a real story to tell – a story that isn’t told enough – and a single, compelling and likable character with which to tell it. It’s a picture with sinew and strength. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/feb/11/mr-jones-review-agnieszka- holland-james-norton-berlin-film-festival Mr Jones – first look review By Ian Mantgani – 11th February 2019 Agnieszka Holland’s biopic of Welsh journalist Gareth Jones is one of the most powerful films at this year’s Berlinale. In 2006, a plaque was unveiled at Aberystwyth University for Gareth Jones, a Welsh journalist who died in relative obscurity at the age of 29. It was a small, defiant recognition of a man who had been shamed in his time for doing the right thing. Jones had written of Stanlinist inefficiency, particularly the Holodomor, the famine in Ukraine that killed up to 7.5 million people between 1932 and 1933, at a time when the US was preparing to cool relations with the USSR and conventional journalistic wisdom was to praise communism as imperfect but brave. Mr Jones, directed by Agnieszka Holland and written by Andrea Chalupa, is a fiery epic paying further tribute to this forgotten figure of history, and stoking the coals of remembrance as the forces of authoritarianism are, as they say, back in the news. The young British actor James Norton stars in a breakthrough leading role as Jones, a bespectacled, thorough, tee-totalling foreign advisor to prime minister David Lloyd George. Fresh from interviewing Hitler and warning that this angry little man may have grand designs, Jones finds himself out of a government job as economic crisis causes government cuts. Idealistic, determined and with a good working knowledge of the Russian language thanks to his language-teacher mother, Jones then travels to Moscow with the intent of interviewing Stalin and encouraging the British government to make an alliance. His dialogue early in the film describes the premier as, “a man who makes miracles,” and notes that, “the Soviets have built more in five years than our government can manage in a hundred.” Of course, the fantasy begins to unravel on the ground, as Jones’ movements are restricted and his main journalistic contact is disappeared. The real Jones travelled to Russia several times in the early 1930s and wrote a sequence of articles trickling out details from multiple sources; in Chalupa’s condensed, semi-fictionalised account, Jones escapes from his guard on a train to Ukraine, and embarks on a snowy walking tour of horrors where he sees babies on death carts, grain rerouted on trains to Moscow, villages of abandoned houses, families eating human flesh and children wandering around like zombies singing folk songs in tribute to the dead. The summarisation is the closest Mr Jones gets to simple ghoulish bad taste – there are times when Norton’s wandering makes the film feel like it’s shoehorned a PG-rated Son of Saul into a slam-bang digest of a life. Holland directs the film with a whomping energy that, for all its unseemly flash, is incredibly powerful. In one moment, Jones peels a brightly coloured orange in a train full of peasants who huddle in near-monochrome, Holland evoking the little red dress in Schindler’s List.