I had the pleasure of seeing this movie at the Philadelphia Film Festival this week on the pretense of Natalie Portman's performance being lauded by numerous critics as Oscar-worthy. And her performance is absolutely outstanding for sure, and I'll talk about that, but don't be fooled into thinking that this film is simply an actress vehicle or a fluffy Oscar-baiting period piece. This is an intelligent, alluring, intense, poetic, and heartbreaking portrait of an American cultural icon that is one of few films of this year that I'd deem a "must-see".
Let's get the obvious out of the way. Natalie Portman delivers the performance of her career as Jackie Kennedy. Beyond being a pitch-perfect recreation of her soft, airy, almost princess-like voice and demeanor, Portman disappears into Jackie, giving uncommon dimension to a monolithic historical figure. The issue with period pieces revolving around well-known historical figures is that these people tend to enter a sort of mythology, and it's easy to simply cast lookalike actors to play to the cultural conceptions of said figures without humanizing them beyond a teary monologue. Portman, and the film at large, achieve the rare feat of presenting Jackie as a human with a complex story, one that just happens to be enveloped by the larger story of American politics. This is bolstered by Oppenheim's screenplay (which I'll talk about toward the end), but Portman holds a lot of responsibility for the film's emotional power and the intrigue into a well-worn story, bringing levels of depth to an icon of American history with such poise and charisma unseen since Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln - yes, she's that good. The supporting cast holds up terrifically as well, specifically Peter Sarsgaard as Bobby Kennedy, but make no mistake; this is Natalie's movie.
Natalie Portman was lucky, however, to be acting within such a marvelously crafted movie helmed by a brilliant filmmaker. The film, running at a brisk 90-odd minutes, moves like music through its somewhat nonlinear storyline, with a consistent feeling of unease, concocted primarily through Mica Levi's piercing musical score and Stephane Fontaine's intense camerawork. As a story operating mostly behind the scenes of a very public and heavily examined event, Larrain and his creative crew use the iconic elements of the Kennedys - the motorcade, the pink Chanel suit, etc. - to effective ends.
The film is entirely self-aware of the magnitude of its subjects, and uses them not to simply evoke thoughts of "remember this?" for those who may recognize them, but as subtle methods of engagement, creating a sort of intertextuality with real-life American history. No need for explanation or inclusion of iconic events or symbols for the sake of reminding us of the period, but instead to flare up feelings within the audience, often without having to utter a single word about them. It presents these familiar icons of the time so that it may then rip apart our perceptions of them and examine them in a new, and often decidedly uncomfortable, light, literally soaking the idyllic and the beautiful in blood, forcing the audience, as well as Jackie, to reconsider their previously held notions about the people, places, and things typically associated with a just world and a great America that we all thought we knew.
Which brings me to the greatest surprise of this film for me, which is the brilliance of Noah Oppenheim's script. Jackie is not a mere presentation of Jacqueline Kennedy, but a layered and thoughtful character study. And it even goes deeper than an examination of just Jackie, going so far as to ponder the nature of America in general. In many ways, the Kennedys were sort of the swan song of the classical view of America, where presidents, however clearly orchestrated or evidently sleazy, were honorable men of immense stature and idolization, almost to the point of appearing mythical. Jackie, thrust into a life of scrutiny and chaos through her marriage to Jack, has an infatuation with this view of classical America and indeed falls for the facade. She sees her husband as the same myth as the public sees him, as a final bearer of "Camelot", and wants to honor it thusly with a much-publicized restoration of the White House to include paintings and artifacts of historical significance, and to maximize the theatricality of her husband's funeral procession. This involves her often tricking herself into believing that all of this is warranted for her husband's greatness as both man and president, but at some point having to admit to herself that it is an ultimate exercise in vanity.
The film uses America's most publicly popular family of the time to contemplate themes of perception vs. reality (this is most obvious in one of the film's few moments of levity wherein Jackie will describe something about her life or the assassination to the reporter with horrific detail, then immediately refuse to allow him to publish it because she "didn't say that"). Jackie's plea for a lasting Camelot, the idea that America was great and that there is divine purpose to even the greatest of tragedies that will ultimately lead to success and happiness, is not condemned by the film as mere frivolity, but rather as something of a good-natured sham. Jackie claims at one point that her demands for a lavish funeral procession is simply "doing my job", referencing the old notion that the First Lady is there simply for show, to gussy up the public idea of the presidency and to keep up the old-fashioned idyllic perception of America, and her cognizance of this emerges in tandem with that of the reality of her husband's death and the probable meaninglessness of her life. In essence, the audience is forced to realize that their familiarity with the image of the Kennedys means nothing as to actually knowing anything about them or any of the image being true, and this realization is presented directly alongside Jackie's realization of the same fact regarding her own life. As Jackie washes away the glamour of her life, her husband, and America, so does the audience wash away the glamour of Jackie to see a truth that is ugly but, for once, honest.
For some reason, I don't feel like my analysis is doing this film or its complex themes much justice, but long story short, Jackie is an absolutely brilliant period drama and character study led by a terrific performance by Natalie Portman, packed with period detail and gorgeous cinematography, and bolstered by an uncommonly intelligent screenplay that examines public perception vs. reality through one of the most publicly scrutinized and widely watched events (and figures) in modern American history. In a political climate time and again punctuated by public forays into the private lives of larger-than-life people in power, Jackie is an intriguing look at its arguable genesis, showing the sudden and heartbreaking destruction of an old-fashioned, vain, but perhaps strangely necessary perception of inherent goodness and value in America and in life - the destruction of Camelot.
Jackie is one of the very, very best films of the year and I highly recommend seeing it. Its limited release in the US is December 2nd. I have no immediate qualms with it, and upon a second watch I may give it a perfect rating, but for now...
Grade: A
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