WILLING TO DIE FOR AN IDENTITY.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

The most shocking images in Stanley Nelson's comprehensive and chilling documentary ``Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple'' aren't the familiar photos of bloated bodies lying huddled together in a jungle compound. It's the footage of these people taken the night before, putting on a happy face for fact-finding Congressman Leo Ryan, who was visiting Jonestown at the behest of stateside relatives who said their family members were being imprisoned by Peoples Temple leader Jim Jones.

The idea that makes Nelson's movie so provocative is that even up to the final moments, even with all of Jones' psychological and, in some cases, sexual abuse, these people were still full of love and happiness. We see film of Ryan being entertained by vibrant women performing a version of Earth, Wind & Fire's ``That's the Way of the World'' that would make Maurice White proud.

Hours later, Ryan was murdered and, the following day, 909 Peoples Temple members willingly drank cyanide-laced Kool-Aid, parents handing it to their children with Jones urging everyone (we hear the audio) to ``die with a degree of dignity. Don't lie down in tears and agony.''

Nelson charts the background for the 1978 mass suicide, showing Jones' background as a young outcast who found a home in the Pentecostal church. Intimates note his early empathy for African-Americans.

Nelson interviews Jones' adopted son, Jim Jones Jr., who talks of being the first black man to be adopted by a white in the state of Indiana.

Nelson shows Jones' appeal to blacks, the elderly and young whites, promising to create not just a church, but a utopia that would abolish the lines of race and wealth. Some say the '60s died at Altamont, but Nelson makes a case that Jones put the final nail in the coffin in Guyana.

The movie features interviews with surviving Peoples Temple members -- those who got out before the move to Jonestown and two of the five members who escaped to the jungle on the day of the mass suicide. (Another 80 or so were away that day, including Jim Jones Jr.) What emerges is a portrait of good people so starved for community that they were willing to surrender their sanity for a sense of belonging.

Nelson's movie makes the tragedy of that day all the more poignant.

Glenn Whipp, [phone].

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JONESTOWN: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PEOPLES TEMPLE - Three stars

(Not rated: language, disturbing images)

Director: Stanley Nelson.

Running time: 1 hr. 25 min.

Playing: Landmark's Nuart Theater in West Los Angeles.

In a nutshell: Chilling, comprehensive documentary that shows people so starved for belonging that they willingly sacrifice their sanity to get it.