JACKIE – Review

Natalie Portman as “Jackie Kennedy” in JACKIE. Photo by Pablo Larrain. © 2016 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation All Rights Reserved

JACKIE focuses on First Lady Jackie Kennedy in the days following the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Natalie Portman gives an amazing performance, capturing Jackie’s soft, breathy voice and mannerisms and portraying a woman in the public spotlight and facing an enormous historic task while enduring unthinkable private pain. Her Oscar-worthy performance is not the only thing that makes this film worthwhile for more than just history buffs. JACKIE is an impressive film that should remind viewer (or let them know for the first time, in the case of some younger people) why Jackie became such a respected, even revered figure in the years after the assassination.

It is a pivotal moment in time from the country, filled with iconic images of both the assassination and the funeral but JACKIE is not a conventional biopic. Instead, this haunting drama focuses on a particular moment in history but peaks beneath the surface of the iconography to look at the private person, the Jackie behind her image. The director is Pablo Larraín, a Chilean who is legendary in his home country and internationally as a daring filmmaker. Larrain has another film out this year about a historic figure, NERUDA, about the poet and political activist Pablo Neruda, an iconic figure in his native Chile. Since Larrain is not an American, he brings a different viewpoint to the subject. This is a story and person we think we know well but Larrain shows that maybe we don’t.

The film spotlights Jackie as she works to ensure JFK’s legacy through his funeral, a ceremony full of remarkable imagery and evoking Lincoln. At the same time, she also was faced with her private pain at the loss of her husband, consoling her young children, and leaving the home she had lovingly restored.

The film is structured around a famous interview that Mrs. Kennedy gave in the weeks after the funeral, in which she created the Camelot image of her husband’s presidency. But the film also shows her focus in ensuring JFK’s legacy with the funeral, her chain-smoking, her private grief, isolation and moments of madness in days immediately after. The film has a non-linear structure, as well as great production design and cinematography.

JACKIE opens with a touching shot of a grieving Jackie, with music that shifts to a minor key and suffused with dissonance that mirrors her shock and pain. The striking score is by Mica Levi, and adds greatly to the film’s haunting nature.

Billy Crudup portrays the unnamed journalist interviewing her in days after the funeral, which forms the frame around which Larrain builds the film. Supporting cast also includes Peter Sarsgaard as Bobby Kennedy, Greta Gerwig as Jackie’s assistant and friend Nancy Tuckerman, and John Hurt as a priest in whom she confides. JFK is played by Caspar Phillipson, John Carroll Lynch as Lyndon B Johnson and Max Casella as LBJ staffer Jack Valenti.

Larrain shows the private person behind the familiar public persona, and her understanding of her task. Jackie aimed to make JKF unforgettable through the funeral, something that had eluded presidents assassinated since Lincoln. John Kennedy had shown a remarkable grasp of the power of the relatively new media of television during his presidency, and Jackie shared that grasp of it importance to history. After the assassination, Jackie refuses to immediately change clothes, knowing the emotion impact her blood-stained pink suit would have on camera. She leaves nothing to chance, speaking to the American people and history through the perfect images she created.

But the film also shows her loneliness, wandering the White House alone, as Lady Bird Johnson literally measures the drapes. It shows her carefully hidden her cigarette smoking, her private grief, isolation and moments of madness in days immediately after. The film jumps back and forth in time, also including the tour Jackie gave of the White House, the first time television cameras were allowed inside the private residence part of the house. Director Larrain skillfully integrates archival footage

JACKIE is certain to earn award nominations for Portman and her moving performance, but Larrain’s film deserves attention for its remarkable power as a piece of cinema, a portrait of private and public mourning and the individual who was responsible for sealing a historic legacy.

Rating: 4 1/2 out of 5 stars