AMERICAN TRAGEDY
‘Chappaquiddick’ takes hard, captivating look at Ted Kennedy scandal
Camelot, it ain’t. “Chappaquiddick” offers a no-punchespulled look at how in 1969 Sen. Ted Kennedy drove off the Chappaquiddick bridge in the middle of the night and left aide Mary Jo Kopechne inside to die.
He then waited over nine hours to go to the police. And he remained a U.S. senator the rest of his life.
Nearly 50 years later, it remains a devastating tragedy, not just for a young woman’s cruel end but for how it was politically manipulated by the Kennedy brain trust to save Ted’s career.
John Curran’s film, scripted by Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan, is detailed, precise and gut-wrenching.
Buoyed by Aussie Jason Clarke’s astonishing, unremorseful Edward M. Kennedy and complemented by Kate Mara’s sweet Kopechne, “Chappaquiddick” charts how a tabloid scandal was sanitized and sold to the nation and Massachusetts voters.
Curran begins with a montage that emotionally situates Kennedy on this July 1969 weekend.
It’s been a year since his brother Bobby was assassinated — he’s the last surviving son. Joe, his domineering father, has been incapacitated by a stroke and can barely speak. Ted is the de facto father figure for Bobby’s brood.
The weekend marks Neil Armstrong’s lunar landing, the triumphant culmination of the space race his brother John sparked.
And everywhere there is the sense that America is waiting for Ted to step up and assume the presidency.
If “Chappaquiddick” presents a tormented PTSD Kennedy, drinking too much and alienated from the crowd of campaign workers, including Kopechne, that has come together to disband, it hardly renders him “tragic.”
This Kennedy is all about Ted. When he emerges from the car submerged upside down and can’t find Kopechne, he calls two friends — one the state attorney general — who tell him to report the accident to the police.
He can’t — he knows he must wait until his alcohol level is normal.
The film says Kopechne was alive and struggling in the car; if reported immediately, she might have been saved.
“Chappaquiddick” then becomes a portrait of criminal negligence as the clan’s top advisers, including JFK adviser Ted Sorensen and his Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara arrive for damage control and to fashion a cover story.
As strong and compelling as “Chappaquiddick” is, it prompts the question: Would it be different today? Are the rich and powerful ever held accountable for their crimes?