Reseñas de la crítica

While “Mr. Jones” isn’t close to being in the same league as great journalism films such as “All The President’s Men” and “Spotlight,” it takes a noble page from their book in not delivering a conclusive ending. Instead, it leaves things at a place where the work to uncover “only one version of the truth” (as often cited by characters in the film) seems to be just beginning.

Holland is one of those filmmakers who doesn’t need dialogue to express meaning, and some of the strongest scenes in “Mr. Jones” are wordless or nearly so.

At times, “Mr. Jones” has the gravity and grace to remind us of what an accomplished chronicler of 20th-century horror Agnieszka Holland can be. And at times, it goes off track in ways that sadly undercut both the gravity and the grace.

Holland doesn’t need to do much to evoke the more well-known Eastern European tragedies that followed Stalin’s manmade famine known as the Holodomor, but the story also reverberates with our current moment.

Twenty minutes have been cut from Agnieszka Holland’s fact-based drama since its premiere last year and the result is a stirring, at times vividly inventive piece of film-making that strikes a note of warning about the risks of fake news.

Mr Jones stumbles at times, but it’s a valuable reminder of a heroic figure and a forgotten genocide, all the more relevant at a time when serious journalism is under crass attack.

Mr. Jones isn’t just middlebrow – it’s the middle of the middlebrow: core-brow; nucleus-brow... Presented in the inescapable grey-brown colour grading of such period confections, it’s a worthwhile, at times exciting, and ultimately informative effort if perhaps not a great one.

There’s enough in Mr Jones to make you want a good deal more... An intrepid crusader against actually fake news, he’s very much a hero for our divided moment – you just wish his own biopic stopped fussing and stepped out of his way.

The film is technically flawless, despite being somewhat classic and lengthy in nature, but the story itself is so powerful and the indignation that results from Jones' descent into horror – a process described by Holland as a passage through the various circles of hell – is so suffocating that we won't be forgetting what he witnessed in Ukraine in a hurry.

Holland has been making films about this time for 40 years... Here, she re-energises the vision with the kind of gusto you’d expect from a music video director, and it’s blindsidingly effective.

With a cast impressively headed by James Norton, and cinematography that captures the bleakness of winter and deprivation to grimly palatable effect, Holland’s drama comes across in part as a meticulously mounted, sometimes solemn history lesson.

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.