Jackie, 2016.
Directed by Pablo Larrain.
Starring Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup and John Hurt.
SYNOPSIS:
The assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, his funeral and the days immediately afterwards are related from the perspective of his wife, Jackie.
One of the most shocking moments in 20th century history, one that reverberated around the entire western world and further afield, happened in Dallas, Texas on November 22nd 1963. Driving through the city in a cavalcade, wife Jackie at his side, US President John F Kennedy was shot and, despite the efforts of staff at Parkland Memorial Hospital (as featured in Parkland in 2013), was pronounced dead shortly afterwards.
Pablo Larrain’s Jackie concentrates on the events of that day as seen through the eyes of the person agonisingly closest to what happened, the then First Lady, Jackie Kennedy (Natalie Portman). It starts with her relating events to a journalist just days after the funeral, shifts focus to a re-creation of her famous TV documentary taking viewers on a tour of The White House and then on to her own memories. So it’s not a bio-pic in the conventional sense. But in the sense that puts Jackie’s complexities as a woman, her strengths and her weaknesses, under an all-seeing microscope, it is something of a biography.
She cuts a solitary figure, even before the gun was fired. Inside Air Force One, she prepares to meet the great and the good of Dallas, with only her lifelong confidante and personal secretary, Nancy Tuckerman (Greta Gerwig) to help her. The President only appears as they prepare to leave the plane. After the assassination, her isolation becomes more acute. One much-need hug comes from brother-in-law Bobby (Peter Sarsgaard), while the rest of the Kennedy family to close ranks. She’s frequently shown walking through White House rooms, completely alone, a tiny, fragile figure in the midst of grandeur. Grandeur that she’s created.
But now she’s lost everything. She’s no longer the First Lady: that honour went to Lady Bird Johnson as soon as the Vice President took the oath on the presidential plane. She’s lost her husband and the family that came with him. She wasn’t, after all, born a Kennedy. All she has left are her two children and, because she has to leave The White House almost immediately, all her belongings are in storage. Rather like her life. Who is she now?
Shot in 4:3 ratio which makes the screen the same shape as a 1960s television, the film merges archive footage of the assassination (the famous Zapruder home movie), the funeral and sections of the White House documentary with astonishingly convincing re-creations. The attention to detail is microscopic, from the back combed hair and black eye liner down to the blood stains on Jackie’s iconic pink suit, yet the most tear jerking moment from the actual funeral is passed over. Little John Junior saluting his father’s coffin.
It’s a portrait of sudden, shocking loss – the re-construction of the assassination itself is devastating – but also one of celebrity, of life lived in front of the camera and the contrast between public and private lives. In public, Jackie is always gracious: she continually smiles for the camera in the documentary and reminds Jack as they leave the plane in Dallas “I love crowds.” But in private, it’s clear this isn’t something that comes naturally. It’s a performance.
And Portman’s performance is all-consuming. In turn crumbling under the weight of grief – watch the scene where she removes the blood spatters from her face – brittle to the point of splintering, and defensively spiky when talking to the journalist, she manages to keep herself together in front of any audience, public or private. Her eyes tell us everything, sometimes overflowing with tears, sometimes blank and staring, sometimes full of pain and bewilderment. On the night of the assassination, she’s alone in The White House, drifting around its opulent rooms, trying out every single one of her elegant dresses, all to the tune of Camelot sung by Richard Burton. Her husband has died and that idyllic dream has gone with him.
It can’t be a coincidence that Jackie is released in the UK on the same day that the latest occupant of The White House officially takes up office. It gives the film a contemporary resonance, but that shouldn’t and doesn’t detract from its visual and emotional power, and Portman’s superlative performance. Come Oscar night, she should be First Lady all over again.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Freda Cooper – Follow me on Twitter, check out my movie blog and listen to my podcast, Talking Pictures.
Originally published January 18, 2017. Updated November 14, 2019.
