JANUARY 25, 2017
As Tuesday’s Academy Awards nominations demonstrated, there are a number of 2016 films that have definitely taken some chances. Best Documentary nominee “O.J.: Made in America” bet that a film running over 7 1/2 hours could find an audience. Best Picture nominee “La La Land” took a chance that an old-fashioned musical could work in 2016.
But to my mind no film this past year took a bigger chance than Pablo Larraín’s “Jackie,” which is like no psychological docudrama that you’ve ever seen, especially when the subject is about a beloved First Lady of the United States.
From the opening moments of “Jackie,” any expectation that this is going to be a conventional political biography disappears with a long mournful cello note, the first in a score by British experimental musician Mica Levi (who earned an Oscar nomination for her score). It’s chilling, and far from the atmosphere in which we would expect to see Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy (Oscar nominee Natalie Portman).
Though “Jackie” does look back at her glamorous time in the White House, most of the film is set in the four days after President Kennedy’s assassination, as Jackie works through the shock, the grief and the anger that nearly consumed her.
But above all, the film illustrates her need to keep control of her image and that of her husband. After that one horrifying moment in Dallas, the world that Jackie knew and loved was no longer hers. She could no longer call the White House home. The love of her life had taken away from her. And she was now a widow with two kids. She endures all this, while Lady Bird Johnson (Beth Grant), the new First Lady, is looking at fabric swatches for the new White House upholstery.
If this sounds like this take on the JFK assassination is a bit mad, you may be onto something. “Jackie” has been called by several critics a “fever dream,” and that may not be too far from the truth. The film is framed by an interview set a short time after the assassination where Jackie, resting at the Kennedy family home in Hyannis Port, agrees to be questioned for Life Magazine by someone simply billed as “The Reporter” (Billy Crudup) but who is clearly based on Presidential historian Theodore White. The Reporter approaches the interview with the confidence of a seasoned journalist, but he quickly learns who’s really in control.
After her 4th or 5th cigarette, for example, Jackie sees the reporter eying the ashtray filled with butts and pointedly tells him “I don’t smoke.” He slowly gets the picture when, after providing a bit of salacious copy that any journalist would kill to get, he wonders, “I suppose you won’t allow me to print that.” Jackie replies, “Of course not. Because I never said it.”
This Jackie is so at odds with the icon whom we have come to know that audiences might come to question whether what we’re seeing is the real Jackie, her version of herself or some kind of dream. This is where Chilean director Pablo Larraín comes in, as speculating whether something is real or imaginary is his specialty. (He asks similar questions is his other movie in theaters now, “Neruda,” which I’ll review in the coming weeks.)
Working from a top notch script by Noah Oppenheim, Larraín often raises the questions of the many personae that Jackie presents by the use of his visuals, usually shooting her in close-ups and often with dual images, such as photographing her reflected in a window or even a make-up mirror (see photo above) that emphasizes that at any given moment, there may be as many as three Jackies being manifested. It’s a hugely imaginative piece of visual storytelling.
However, I have a hard time thinking that “Jackie” would be as effective without the extraordinary central performance by Natalie Portman. I just watched part of CBS’ iconic 1962 tour of the White House that the First Lady gave in 1962, and not only does Portman have the distinctive Jackie voice down pat, but she also commands the rare mixture of strength and demureness that was a hallmark of the First Lady. And most importantly, there’s that slight bit of madness that Portman brought to her Oscar-winning performance in “Black Swan” and taps into again here with enormous effectiveness.
Love me some Emma in “La La Land” and dazzled by Isabelle in “Elle,” but for me the best female lead performance this year was delivered by Natalie Portman here, and for that alone, “Jackie” should be seen.
Mind you, the film is not for everyone, especially if you like your First Ladies genteel. But if your looking for some fearlessness in your filmmaking, I can assure you that “Jackie” has balls of steel.
GRADE: A-
