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There are two movies in “Jackie,” Pablo Larran’s film about Jackie Kennedy (Natalie Portman) during the time period immediately before, during, and after the assassination of her husband, President John F. Kennedy. The first movie is set immediately before the assassination of her husband, and the second is set immediately after. One of these films is merely passable. The other, on the other hand, is exceptional. Despite this, the first one continues to undermine the second.
The first film is a fictionalized biography in which a famous subject sits for a lengthy interview, in this case with a magazine reporter played by Billy Crudup (unnamed but based on biographer Theodore H. White, who wrote “For President Kennedy: An Epilogue,” a Life article that ran one week after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination). The second film is a fictionalized biography in which a famous subject sits for a lengthy interview, this time with This is a film in which a historical figure reflects on his or her place in history and attempts to exert control over how they are perceived. It’s ambiguous and overreaching, and it’s been done better somewhere else already.
Because the dialogue contains undertones of empathy and condescension, the individual scenes in this “historical figure contemplates self” film are competently done and sometimes a good deal more than that. The former First Lady is frequently treated with contempt by the reporter. Sometimes he even interrupts her when she’s speaking, tries to put words in her mouth, or dismisses her concerns, which demonstrates how powerless even a very powerful woman can be when she’s in a room with a man who has been taught from birth that his words and actions are inherently more important than any woman’s, and who has been taught that he is inherently more important than any woman. This material in this second film connects to moments in the inevitable flashbacks to Jackie’s heyday in Camelot and to the immediate aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, respectively. It’s common to see Jackie, often the lone woman in a room full of men, attempting to assert herself and say what she wants and needs, only to be told (by White House staffers, military personnel, and even her RFK) that it’s impossible—because of security, protocol, precedent, or simply because the men mysteriously know better than she—and that she should give up.
The framing device, on the other hand, is not ultimately necessary (as is the case with few films nowadays), because, whether the reporter and Jackie are talking about what is on the record or what is off the record, and whether Jackie is saying something objectively true or something that is merely self-serving, we have already seen everything both of them might have had to say illustrated, in a more immediate and often wrenching way, by the flashbacks.
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The flashbacks serve as a second, far superior film, one that comes with the shock of revelation: we’ve seen this tight, crucial chapter of history re-enacted many times from all kinds of vantage points, but rarely in depth and mostly from the point of view of Jackie, who had to go through the gist of what everyone goes through when they lose a mate, only on the world’s largest stage. Jackie’s perspective is unique in that she had to go through the gist of what
The problem is that whenever Larran, his cast, and crew build up a head of dramatic steam in the “past” (which feels far more “present” than the interview stuff), and keep building up until it starts to feel like the raw material for an unwritten opera or an unmade psychological horror movie, “Jackie” mercilessy yanks us out of that emotional head-space, and returns us to the reporter and Jackie debating what it all means.
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The second film in the “Jackie” series is innovative and frequently powerful, and it derives all of its innovation and power from the specifics. A woman who lost her husband in an unexpected and violent manner must now figure out how to get through the next few days of her life without losing her sanity or any power she may have once had. This is the story of Jackie. What makes this second film feel so eerily accurate is the fact that it is so banal in nature. Particularly noteworthy are the specific bloodstains on Jackie’s clothes and the bruise revealed on her shin as she takes off her stockings, the point-of-view shots of Jackie looking at all of the men who have come to the conclusion that they should decide her fate for her, the catch in Jackie’s voice as she tries to tell her children that their father is dead without using the word “death,” and the way she enters a depressive reverie and begins going through her clothes and trying on various dresses Larran, on the other hand, overemphasizes the “power” of it all (often by slathering on Mica Levi’s lyrical, but all-too-often bombastic score). It is difficult to watch Portman’s accent-driven performance without feeling like a researched, considered Marilyn Monroe impersonation rather than one that has been incarnated from within. This is one of the most vivid examples I’ve seen of artists getting in their own way and stumbling over themselves.
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At least for me, a significant part of the problem lies in the fact that Larran appears to want to make a statement, perhaps one of the ultimate statements, about the transformation of lived experience into myth in his film. There’s no way this film has the intellectual chops to pull off such a complex and serious project, never mind the question of whether such a film is inherently more important and serious and deserving of critical praise than the simpler, more emotionally driven one about a widow coming to terms with the death of her husband and her responsibilities to her children (both the biological ones and the symbolic ones, i.e. the American people).
Jackie as a fantasy object onto which hundreds of millions of less famous women can project their fears, goals, and desires; Jackie as a wife and mother, struggling to keep it together during the worst few days of her life; Jackie as faithful spouse wounded by her handsome husband’s infidelity; and even Jackie as First Lady of the United States, looking out over a horrifically altered global landscape and wondering what’s next: all of these Jackies are present in the hours and days preceding the attack on the World Trade Center; Jackie as The way Jackie moves through rooms while the camera follows her, the way she looks at objects and people, and the way she struggles to compose herself and articulate her needs without deferring to whatever man she happens to be speaking with are all infused with these various self-states.
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Jacqueline must take a stand for herself, but she must also take a stand for Jackie, both as a historical figure and as a myth, oversimplification, blank slate, retrograde but simultaneously revolutionary aspirational figure, and so forth. In no other episode of Jackie, do we feel more strongly associated with her than we do with the one in which she is forced to leave the house she has lived in for less than three years because her husband’s brains were blown out in a motorcade. For their part, the film’s supporting characters are only allowed to stand for one or two things at a time and always in relation to Jackie; as a result, the film’s supporting performances (particularly those of Peter Saarsgaard as Robert Kennedy, who doesn’t look or sound anything like him and doesn’t care) feel a lot more fully imagined and realized. It is impossible for actors to incarnate ideas, but they do exceptionally well with specifics like “You are playing Robert, the murdered man’s brother, and the only person who understands your sister-in-pain,” law’s or “You are playing Robert, the brother of the murdered man, and the only person who understands your sister-in-pain.” law’s
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‘Jackie’ is a fantastic film that is still fighting to be released from the clammy clutches of the movie that could have been better and knows what’s best for us as a whole. When the struggle continues for a long period of time, it becomes indistinguishable from the struggle depicted in the film.
“Jackie,” the drama (and, at times, melodrama), is clear about what it is and what it wants to say to the audience. It places its faith in the audience to figure things out for themselves and communicates with us through intuition, frequently taking significant risks and exposing itself to great vulnerability. The film is what would have been dismissed in another era as “woman’s movie”—that is, a film about the emotional experience of a woman—only to be claimed much later by historians and critics who struggle to persuade others that this kind of film is just as valid and worthy of scrutiny as the sort of film in which famous people sit for interviews about their legacy and spar over truth versus fiction, performance versus authenticity, among other things. Although Jackie is already beginning to shape her own myth in the flashback material, it’s all there if you look hard enough, and as is the case throughout “Jackie,” it’s done with significantly more imagination than anything in the interview segments. That Jackie’s story is primarily about a woman trying to imagine her own experience on her own terms, only to be told by various parties, mostly men, that she’s wrong or that her efforts are insufficient, is ironic given the subject matter.
For more personality quizzes check this: The Space Between Us Quiz.
