At a glance
Portman pulls off challenging depiction of JFK widow in wake of assassination
Jackie, we hardly knew you. Although no more than her first name is needed to trigger an entire universe of memories, mythology and celebrity, the woman it refers to had a core mystery that remained unassailable despite media scrutiny of the most relentless kind.
To convincingly pull the curtain back on that kind of a life — to be true to the tragic history and alive to the unexplored drama, to take smart and fearless ownership of what could have been an overly familiar story — could not have been more difficult.
But what makes the success of “Jackie” even more remarkable is the paradoxical team that came together to persuasively
“Jackie.”
Directed by Pablo Larrain.
R (for brief strong violence and some language) 1:40 at the Crosswoods, Drexel, Gateway, Lennox 24 and Polaris 18 theaters
imagine the behind-thescenes drama that followed the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Crafting the compelling script, which won the screenwriting prize at the Venice Film Festival, was a man best known as a successful TV executive. Directing the story of an American legend was a Chilean filmmaker who had never worked in English before. And starring in the film was an actress who, despite already having won an Oscar, seems with this performance to be coming into her own.
Writer Noah Oppenheim, a longtime political junkie and senior vice president of NBC News, came up with the idea of a multilayered examination of Jacqueline Kennedy during the post-assassination week — a period when she had to deal with her personal devastation as well as questions of preserving her husband’s legacy.
Though not a mainstream name in film directing, Pablo
Larrain is highly regarded internationally; he has an instinct for the jugular and a gift for maximum emotional effect. His disconcerting, intentionally off-kilter “Jackie” demonstrates his ability to combine an arthouse sensibility with a broader popular touch.
Larrain told his producers that he wouldn’t work on “Jackie” unless Natalie Portman agreed to take the lead role. Her superb performance, utterly convincing, vindicates his determination.
With this film following her exceptional self-directed work in “A Tale of Love and Darkness,” Portman has moved from strength to strength. Her Jacqueline Kennedy — half resolute warrior, half frightened wreck — is a completely believable study in agony, sophistication and steely perseverance.
“Jackie” opens with an assertive close-up of the former first lady looking beyond distraught and approaching the camera with the dissonant sounds of Mica Levy’s unsettling score echoing behind her.
Then, a week later, Jackie is at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Massaschusetts, watching suspiciously as a taxi pulls up with a journalist (Billy Crudup), who is unnamed but based partly on Life magazine’s Theodore White.
The reporter has arrived to interview Mrs. Kennedy. Livid about the press, Jackie is determined to get her version of history into the mix.
“There’s a great divide,” she says in one of the script’s many fine lines, “between what people believe and what I know to be true.”
With this interview as its baseline, “Jackie” moves purposefully back and forth in time. It includes the grim assassination as well as Jackie’s determination to be no one’s puppet and plan a funeral that would secure her husband’s place in history in much the way that Abraham Lincoln’s did.
A key segment is an indepth look at the 1962 TV program “A Tour of the White House With Mrs. John F. Kennedy,” in which Jackie takes CBS newsman Charles Collingwood, and TV viewers, through the newly renovated White
House to emphasize that the improvements were financed privately as a way to enhance the structure’s central position in American history.
Although it sounds simple, the segment, highlighting Jackie’s media saavy and personal nervousness, showcases Larrain’s gift for virtuoso technique. He has used sections of the original black-and-white television kinescope while also placing Portman as Jackie inside it, and he has taken us behind the scenes via color footage that exactly reproduces the look of the original.
Larrain was also wise in casting the “Jackie” supporting roles, often using fine actors in unexpected ways. In addition to Cruddup as the reporter, Peter Sarsgaard plays Robert Kennedy; John Hurt, an imperturbable priest; Richard E. Grant, Kennedy confidant William Walton; and, most impressive, Greta Gerwig, unrecognizable as Nancy Tuckerman, Jackie’s friend and social secretary.
Ultimately, though, the potent collaboration of star Portman and director Larrain is what makes the difference.