‘Putting a light’ on past horror
Film tells of man-made Soviet Ukraine famine
The truth needs to be heard eventually.
And in Agnieszka Holland’s “Mr. Jones,” available on digital, that’s the singular mission of Gareth Jones (James Norton), the late Welsh journalist whose dogged pursuit of the truth exposed the man-made famine Holodomor, which killed millions in Soviet Ukraine between 1932 and 1933.
“I was thinking for quite a long time, since the end of the Iron Curtain, that very quickly we forgot and forgive the Communist crimes. And some crimes against humanity are unbearable,” Oscar nominee Holland, 71, told the Daily News.
Noting that much of the world “is not really familiar” with the film’s events, Holland added that even the true death toll is unknown.
“No one speaks about it. No one knows about it,” the Polish film and television director and screenwriter said. “So I thought that somehow it is a duty to put a light on that.”
Peter Sarsgaard, who plays Jones’ perceived ally, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Walter Duranty, joined the film for the opportunity to work with “one of the top directors over the past many decades” as well as the chance to highlight the cyclical nature of history.
“It really is just like Stalin said, you know, he’s like, ‘A million is a statistic and one person’s a tragedy’ type of thing,” Sarsgaard, 49, told The News. “[Holodomor is] like, one of those events in history that just sort of slides by for some reason.”
“It’s all bound to happen again and is happening again all the time. And that’s why these stories get told,” Sarsgaard said, pointing to a sense of déjà vu people feel about such tragedies. “We have to tell it again, apparently because everybody keeps forgetting.”
Throughout the film, which will be available on demand July 3, Jones tirelessly strives to avoid alerting the Soviets to his mission, and quickly learns that some journalists are just out for themselves.
Jones “is facing similar kinds of the questions and problems we are facing today,” the “In Darkness” director explained, pointing to “the corruption of media and fake news and manipulation for the means of the propaganda and some agendas — political, ideological, and so forth and so on.”
For Sarsgaard, Duranty — whom he considers “basically Stalin’s apologist” — wasn’t motivated by ideology, though.
“It wasn’t like he liked Stalin,” the Golden Globe nominee explained.
“It was personal. It was like, about his station and being important and a kind of greed and being respected, and the same s—t that motivates bad journalists these days.
“And we all know what it means to be wildly self-interested, even if the last time you remember really obviously being that way is like, when you were a teenager,” he added. “We’ve all done it, and we all do it all the time. It’s just some people sort of bathe in it.”
Having played his fair share of immoral characters with questionable morals, Sarsgaard has long been “fascinated with people and ideas that were destructive because I thought to ignore them was to empower them.
“As much as I want to ignore all of the hatred in the world, it obviously does not pay to do that,” he explained. “So, what actually does motivate people? … Thank God I didn’t have to play Stalin, because to answer that question, with that guy, who the f—k knows?”
A staunch advocate for unbiased investigative journalists who “deliver the truth to the people,” Holland notes that without the work of reporters like Jones, “democracy cannot survive.”
That said, the “Europa Europa” director remains “quite pessimistic about where we are going.”
“I feel some kind of the urge to make the movie of this time only if I feel that it is not really the past, that the history didn’t end,” she explained, referencing William Faulkner’s iconic quote: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
“For me also, the past is part of the present,” Holland said. “It’s going on.”