Portrait of first lady Jackie in the wake of tragedy
EXTRAORDINARY in its piercing intimacy and lacerating in its sorrow, Jackie is a remarkably raw portrait of an iconic American first lady, reeling in the wake of tragedy while at the same time summoning the defiant fortitude needed to make her husband’s death meaningful, and to ensure her own survival as something more than a fashionably dressed footnote.
Powered by an astonishing performance from a never-better Natalie Portman in the title role, this unconventional bio-drama also marks a boldly assured English-language debut for Pablo Larrain, the gifted Chilean director behind such films as No, The Club and Neruda.
A fragmented mosaic that comes together into a portrait of sometimes almost unbearable emotional intensity, it’s also a sharply observed account of how the wheels of the political machine keep turning, even in times of devastating trauma.
Larrain wastes not a moment before showing us the tangled wreckage of Jackie’s psyche, clearly visible through the tear-stained windows of Portman’s eyes in extreme close-up as she strolls the grounds of the family compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, a week after John F Kennedy’s murder.
When an unnamed journalist (Crudup) arrives at the house to interview her, there are no staff to usher him in, no filters of any kind. In her quietly adversarial first words to him, she makes it clear she will be editing the conversation: “In case I don’t say exactly what I mean.”
As a framing device through which events of the preceding week, as well as earlier moments from the Kennedy presidency, resurface, this might have been clunky in less skilled hands.
But being privy to Jackie’s determination to honour her husband Pablo Larraín Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup, John Hurt 13 DV 100 minutes while taking control of her own legacy makes for riveting drama.
In a high-wire performance that encompasses the careful poise as well as the bone-deep insecurities of its subject, Portman’s voice is her greatest asset.
There’s a finishing-school exactitude to her phrasing, coupled with quivering notes like fine bone china that might crack with even the softest impact.
But she also has a cool authority when required, her words and her eyes working together to make it clear she brooks no argument.
With profound compassion the film shows its subject to be a complicated, at times self-contradictory woman. And nor is JFK rendered a saint, his character flaws suggested in confidences shared by Jackie with a priest (Hurt) whose responses are anything but religious platitudes.
As good as the cast is, Portman’s incandescent performance is obviously the clincher.
Her Jackie is both inscrutable and naked, broken but unquestionably resilient, a mess and yet fiercely dignified.
The cogs in her head turn without pause as she assesses each situation and then delivers her response, sometimes with the reflexive spontaneity of a woman reduced to exposed nerve endings and other times with the careful consideration of a political consort who has become a savvy observer.
Larrain’s decision to refrain from depicting her reaction in that awful instant in Dallas almost until the end of the movie, pays off with wrenching impact. – Hollywood Reporter