JACKIE AS MASTER MANIPULATOR
Drama unfolds as series of tableaus between assassination and funeral
Jackie Kennedy would not have tweeted.
In this sombre slice from the life of the former U.S. first lady, the newly widowed Mrs. Kennedy is shown to be a master manipulator of the press, telling a Time magazine reporter (Billy Crudup) through a fog of tobacco: “I don’t smoke.”
And after nearly breaking down while recalling for him the events of Nov. 22, 1963, she snaps: “Don’t think for one second that I’m going to let you publish that.”
With a journalist wrapped around your finger, why dirty your thumbs?
The Time magazine interview that gave us the KennedyCamelot connection forms the backbone of the screenplay by Noah Oppenheim (The Maze Runner).
And the resulting film works best as a series of tableaus rather than a structured story — its most powerful moments seem to exist on their own, outside the larger narrative.
There’s Jackie (Natalie Portman’s best work since winning the Oscar for 2010’s Black Swan), hours after the death of her husband, obsessing over the calibre of the bullet that killed him, and demanding to know exactly what will be done during the autopsy.
Here she is refusing to change out of her blood-spattered dress on the flight back to Washington, telling the new first lady, Lady Bird Johnson: “Let them see what they’ve done.”
Most of the action takes places over the three days between the shooting and the funeral, which included an outdoor procession
that had security agents fretting over the possible mayhem should another shooter appear.
But Jackie was adamant that her husband’s send-off be commensurate with his historical importance; and if history hadn’t yet weighed in on the matter, she was determined to suggest its direction.
This self-reflection is also the script’s weakest feature, however; one can almost feel the characters reaching out to 21st-century viewers with a plea to remember them.
The score by Mica Levi is also a touch insistent, threatening to overwhelm the visuals with its funereal bombast; the composer did much more effective work in her only other film credit to date, 2013’s Under the Skin.
But Portman ably holds the reins, assisted no doubt by the unfussy direction of Pablo Larraín (2012’s No, the upcoming Neruda).
She unfurls facets of Jackie’s character through interactions with her friend and social secretary Nancy Tuckerman (Greta Gerwig), JFK’s brother Bobby (Peter Sarsgaard), a priest (John Hurt) and others.
This is contrasted with flashbacks to the 1961 televised tour of the White House, featuring a far less media-savvy first lady. Within two years, she would be in full control of her image, if not the barbarous events that required her to wield that power.