After John F. Kennedy's fatal trip to Dallas in 1963, US First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy (Natalie Portman) became saluted worldwide for her composure following his assassination. But privately, it was quite another story. After leaving the White House a week later, she agrees to do an interview at her temporary lodgings in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts with a journalist (Billy Crudup) who seeks as delicately as possible to discern just how that tragic November day felt for her and how she handled planning the funeral and consoling her children, Caroline and John Jr., along with her tenure as First Lady leading up to that. Throughout the interview, Mrs. Kennedy asserts her authority over which aspects of it will be either on or off the record.
After his 2012 gem No was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, Pablo Larrain seamlessly makes the jump to English-language filmmaking with this riveting portrait of such an iconic figure. Larrain and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim, both of whom weren't even born until the 1970s, collectively nonetheless manage to evoke the mood and aesthetics of 1963 like they'd lived through that era, and when the film explores how the President's and First Lady's roles work inside the White House, the Chilean Larrain demonstrates a sharp understanding of this most American of American landmarks. Oppenheim's screenplay also wisely invokes the lingo of the time and hints at the tradition of etiquette and property First Ladies still have to uphold; at one point Jackie reprimands Robert Kennedy (Peter Sarsgaard) for swearing. Also at their disposal and benefit are Madeline Fontaine's costumes and Mica Levi's score, both deservedly Oscar-nominated, and Stephane Fontaine's nicely relaxed photography.
But undoubtedly the heart and soul of Jackie is the indomitable Natalie Portman. Herself Oscar-nominated in 2017, Portman spent months preparing for the part, watching footage of White House tours the real Jackie hosted, reading over twenty biographies and studying a recording of the actual interview whose depiction here is used as a framing device (Crudup's journalist was based on Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.), and you can tell. She gets everything right, from Jackie's husky vocal cadences to her fashionista swagger to her shattered and shell-shocked private breakdowns. When she gradually removes her make-up and bloodied clothes, Portman reveals how she's also struggling to remove the memory of what she and her nation have just had to endure. The only weakness among her co-stars, too, is the usually reliable Sarsgaard, lazy and uneven as RFK.
Period pieces, especially when they focus on somebody who's been covered to death, can seem thoroughly dull and derivative. Jackie, however, is beautiful and moving because it consciously takes a fresh narrative and visual approach and slowly peels the layers back without feeling contrived. Deeply impressive.
Period pieces, especially when they focus on somebody who's been covered to death, can seem thoroughly dull and derivative. Jackie, however, is beautiful and moving because it consciously takes a fresh narrative and visual approach and slowly peels the layers back without feeling contrived. Deeply impressive.
No comments:
Post a Comment