BRIDGE TOO FAR FOR KENNEDY SAGA
IT’S doubtful that many Americans under the age of 40 or so even know what the name Chappaquiddick refers to, which might in itself provide solid justification for making a film about it.
But the drama of the tragic July 18, 1969 accident in which Senator Ted Kennedy drove a car off a little bridge on the eponymous little Massachusetts island and left 28-year-old political staffer Mary Jo Kopechne to drown needed more energetic and incisive treatment than it receives in this somewhat slack telling.
As it is, the film’s main justification is star Jason
Clarke’s quite plausible physical resemblance to the career politician whose presidential possibilities were arguably quashed by the incident.
The film’s big-screen commercial potential seems highly questionable, although it could achieve some mileage on home viewing.
Telling this story today, with the Kennedy family’s dirty laundry now having been thoroughly inspected for decades, theoretically opens the door for a tell-all approach to a sorry episode that always carried lurid overtones of drunkenness, sexual impropriety, cover-up and family influence exercised from on high.
But the film is surprisingly low-key in dealing with all of these areas, simply suggesting that, because the incident took place in Massachusetts, the family’s home state, royal power obviously played a role.
The funniest line in the film comes when crafty old patriarch Joe Kennedy, virtually incapable of speaking at this point, is asked for his advice over the phone and manages to croak out, “Alibi!”
It’s impossible to watch this film without imagining how such an incident would be covered today; very likely the young woman would not have died had there been cellphones, as she was apparently still alive in the submerged car for at least two hours, maybe three or four.
But even more astounding was Ted Kennedy’s not reporting the incident for 10 hours, then the fact that a story that otherwise would have provided endless headlines became an afterthought when the first moon landing took place two days later.
First-time screenwriters Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan have done their homework in organising the material, but passion and vitality are crucially missing from director John Curran’s treatment. – The Hollywood Reporter