jackie-movie

Jackie ★★

The JFK assassination is such a ferocious seam within the fabric of American mythology. His death, captured on television for the world to see, revealed a first-hand barbarity that most people weren’t used to outside of books or films. With it, his widow, Jacqueline, became a part of that folklore, and Pablo Larraín’s Jackie is attempting to do some very brave, exciting things with that mythology. Working with a screenplay from Noah Oppenheim that seems to scream for a crowning lionization, Larraín instead goes for visceral, unnerving tension. Americans saw Jackie Kennedy as a symbol, her mourning standing for the mourning of a nation. Larraín wants to peel back the symbolism, and expose the humanity. His film is striking and beautiful, but still just becomes another artiface atop the one that was already there. Jackie tries to co-mingle the mythologizing of the Kennedys with the fetishizing of human grief. He’s trying to take Oppenheim’s puff piece script and turn it into a comment on the fragility of empires. We’re left with a handsome film that’s trying to undercut the standard biopic at every turn while still playing by the same rules.

Jackie Kennedy is played by Natalie Portman, and Larraín has a field day with the framing of his lead actress. Portman’s face is frequently placed in the center of the screen, various shades of grief, concern and often performance are shown on her face. Casting Portman seems like a no-brainer. At times, Larraín seems compelled to show her off, like he’s fighting a war and Portman’s visage is his only weapon. The film’s story is framed by an interview with Theodore H. White (Billy Crudup) who spoke with her just a week after the assassination. The bereaved Jackie frequently tells White what will and will not appear in the publication. The piece will be formed completely and entirely by her. You get the sense that the one thing she does gain from her husband’s death is a sense of independence – she will no longer let men dictate the story of her life. We see Jackie moments after the shooting, the iconic pink suit and matching hat splattered with blood. We see as she watches Lyndon Johnson (John Carroll Lynch) get inaugerated on the plane back to Washington. As they prepare for the funeral, her tunnel vision points straight toward one thing: a spectacular funeral ceremony that will encompass her husband’s legacy.

The core of Jackie‘s plot is her fight to get the now-famous processional from the White House to the cathedral. Running up against many, including Johnson, Jack Valenti (Max Casella) and even Robert Kennedy (Peter Sarsgaard), who feel that a long walk through Washington could be a terrible security risk. But that’s just plot. Larraín follows Jackie into the depths of her grief, her piercing survivor’s guilt, her frightened listlessness as she ponders raising their two children without the ever-powerful patriarch. Larraín and cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine craft a gorgeous exploration into the deep existential crisis this woman fell into after witnessing such a gruesome murder up close, of her own husband no less. It’s at this moment that Oppenheim’s script proposes another framing device, Jackie’s pre-burial chat with Father Richard McSorley (John Hurt), as they discuss the role that God plays in the president’s death, in her guilt, and in her own search for death in the face of dispair. There’s a good bit to fret with in regards to Oppenheim’s work here, but the inability to settle on just one framing device seems to me to be the biggest offense.

Portman’s performance is a bit of a curio. It’s fiercely technical, a violent swirl of affectation. It left me cold. It felt more like biting social satire than sincere mimicry. I can’t imagine anyone who wouldn’t be thrown off by her unsual voice work at the beginning of the film. I’m assuming Larraín hoped for one of two things: that it’d be accepted as necessary for accuracy’s sake, or that the audience would simply submit since it takes up such a grand majority of the film. I’m assuming most audiences will accept one of those two options, and thus, accept the film. I, for one, could not. Portman’s work is a bit of a symbol of the film’s own tug-of-war with itself, never wanting to commit to either standard biopic fare or something more critical. I can’t get a sense of whether Portman was playing Jackie for sympathy or laughs. I guess many would argue she’s going for a complicated reality, but I got none of that. The performance is too mannered, too preoccupied with how it’s being viewed. It’s actually not dissimilar from her Oscar-winning performance in Black Swan in this way, but that film was about affectation. I can’t quite place what Portman is hoping for here.

I’ve only ever seen one other film by Larraín, 2012’s No, which I found to be an astonishing portrayal of the creativity that people can possess when confronted with oppression. That film was about Chile’s fight against the dictator Augusto Pinochet, and Larraín is a Chilean himself. He knows a thing or two about false idols and the the dangers of mythologizing politicians. I greatly appreciate his input on this film, and I appreciate it even more that he was able to make such an expressive piece of work. But Jackie is still handicapped by its screenplay, which takes a very straightforward view of Kennedy’s place in history, and reinforces her place as one of America’s Great Victims (while ignoring the true victims of American society). Portman will probably win an Oscar for this part, which I won’t begrudge her. She’s doing nothing if not working hard. Portman has gained a reputation as a Great American Actress without doing very much, and Jackie seems like the first time she’s really strained herself for a part she wasn’t exactly perfect for. She’s definitely been better, and I feel like Jackie gives her some outlets for expression while taking others away. Jackie Kennedy always feared that people wouldn’t see past her beauty, and in Jackie, we’re so seeped in Portman’s beauty that there’s not much further to go.

 

Directed by Pablo Larraín