What was the point?
So, she decorated the White House and threw some tantrums over a funeral, that's basically the whole plot. Is it really a story that needed to be told?
shareThe story does not reside in action elements—it emerges in a revision of character. Here is my review:
Set a few weeks after JFK's assassination on November 22, 1963, and intensely reflecting on the horrors of that day and those that followed, Jackie creates an appropriately bleak, stark atmosphere, one characterized by extreme shock and extreme grief. These elements pervade Chilean director Pablo Larrain's movie and Natalie Portman's portrayal of Jacqueline Kennedy in what amounts to an appropriately revisionist film. Jackie challenges or complicates the typical image of Jacqueline Kennedy: her beauty, her elegance, her style, her cultured taste. To be sure, all these qualities remain very much on display, but Jackie offers a useful corrective or complement. Jackie Kennedy was a feminine icon in all the usual (if heightened and freshened) ways, but what we see here instead is a fully dimensional woman granted the agency and complexity usually reserved for male historical figures and male movie protagonists. Natalie Portman's Jackie Kennedy—apparently like the real-life Jackie Kennedy who was little-known to the public—is manipulative, but not necessarily in a bad way. Rather, she is a clever mythmaker who carefully controls her image and that of her late husband. She dictates the interview terms to journalist Teddy White; she controls what White will publish and what he will not. She possesses her own ideas about what the public will see after the assassination (including her blood-stained pink coat, as she wants the American public to view her husband's blood and take responsibility for it) and her own viewpoints regarding the funeral and procession arrangements, and she imposes her will on those around her. What we see here is not the perfectly poised and flowery Jackie Kennedy of public adoration, but a complex woman filled with bitterness (in part over her husband's affairs and Bobby Kennedy's tolerance of them) and melancholy (she still obviously reveres her husband), a suddenly former First Lady marked by addled stasis, coolly controlled fury, and a grudging search for catharsis. What we see is not the queen of Camelot, but the lady who created Camelot in the first place.
Where Jackie falters, unfortunately, is in its attempt to impose these valuable themes and emotions through cinematic style. Rather than achieving a more organic vision, Larrain forces his ideas through his technical decisions. There is an overabundance of closeups with characters staring directly into the camera (more or less) in the middle of the frame. There is an overabundance of closeups in profile on the sides of the frame. The eerie and unsubtle score, while appropriate at times and effective at establishing the mood, plays too often and too tediously. The editing is too consistently regimented—the film enjoys no room to breathe. The best aspect, stylistically, is the funereal light that bathes the cinematography and creates a paling effect on otherwise bold and sun-splashed colors. Evidently inspired by actual historical footage, the film sometimes offers a vivid look. Overall, though, the strained and telegraphed style turns what could have been a remarkable movie into a curious mediocrity.
Thank you for this thoughtful review - although I thought the film was quite mesmerizing.
Although Arthur Schelsinger Jr. did interivew Jackie after the assassination, wasn't the interview in the movie with Theodore White for Life magazine?
Thank you for this thoughtful review - although I thought the film was quite mesmerizing.
Thanks, and I am planning on viewing the film again, so I will see how I feel after a second screening. I do not disagree that the stylistic choices can create a mesmerizing effect—but possibly some other effects, too, by virtue of being overdone.
Although Arthur Schelsinger Jr. did interivew Jackie after the assassination, wasn't the interview in the movie with Theodore White for Life magazine?
Yes, you are completely correct; I will amend my review in that regard. share
An interesting and thoughtful review. Like you, I did think the movie was flawed, but overall I liked it. I especially liked the fact that the film portrayed Jackie Kennedy in a realistic, as opposed to idealized, light. She does not come off as "America's Sweetheart," nor should she in any film that strives to portray her in a sense that is meant to be akin to reality.
shareBlah blah blah...blowhard alert!= compressor-tard!
shareI especially liked the fact that the film portrayed Jackie Kennedy in a realistic, as opposed to idealized, light. She does not come off as "America's Sweetheart," nor should she in any film that strives to portray her in a sense that is meant to be akin to reality.
... well-put. I believe that many Americans (and perhaps others around the world, as she was an international icon) have forever wanted to cling to the "America's Sweetheart" image. Not only would that mystique have always been misleading, but how could it have been remotely viable after midday on November 22, 1963, given the horrors that she went through? Not only did she lose her husband and the father of her children, but to see him blown away by her side, picking pieces of his brain off the trunk of the car in the midst of a de facto parade, was obviously searing. The horrors are unimaginable, and the impact of such violence cannot be skirted.
Something that Larrain executed very well was the recreation of that scene, just after the shooting of JFK, as Jacqueline Kennedy tried to deal with the horrors of the moment while the car started speeding toward Parkland Hospital. share