THIS piercing, unique and peculiarly powerful film gives us an unsettlingly up-close-and-personal look at the gunshot heard around the world and more specifically the effect that had on one of the people closest to it. Framed via her interview with Life magazine’s Theodore H White (Billy Crudup), we see how Jackie Kennedy’s life was utterly shattered by the assassination of her husband President John F Kennedy. She tries to pick up the pieces with the help of her brother-in-law Bobby (a terrific Peter Sarsgaard) as they plan the all-important funeral.
There have been many films made about that most famous assassination on November 22, 1963 in Dallas – not least Oliver Stone’s seminal investigatory drama JFK – as well as about Mrs Kennedy herself, but this decisively unorthodox biopic does that rarest of things: it gives us a fresh perspective on a subject about which we thought we knew everything.
The lead role is a tall ask, especially if you need to capture the likeness and mannerisms of one of the most famous women of the 20th century, while never stepping over the mark into unintentional caricature. But Portman is more than up to the task by giving a complex, fascinating performance that conveys the utter shock thrust upon a woman of poise and grace.
It’s a near-perfect imitation – showcased in the recreation of the famous White House tour she gave in 1962 – but there is something more than that going on under the surface, a subtle specificity to the way she plays it that makes her feel like a real person as well as the larger-than-life icon.
Some of the film’s most compelling scenes are simply those which allow the camera to linger on close-ups of her face as she looks in the mirror to wipe her husband’s blood and brains off her face; standing in utter shock next to Lyndon Johnson (John Carroll Lynch) on the plane as he’s sworn in as the new President while her husband lies dead; or walking aimlessly around the White House trying on dresses like a phantom suddenly rendered useless in her own life. She can do absolutely nothing about what’s happened to her except try and take it in her stride as best she can while the eyes the world waits to see what she does or says next. “Don’t think for one minute I’m going to let you publish that,” she tells White as he probes her with unforgiving interview questions a mere week after her husband’s death, so desperate to control what the public will think of her now.
She’s engulfed by a mesmeric, alluring and deeply unsettling tone captured by Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s directorial approach that is so at odds with what we’ve come to expect from a traditional biopic.
Then there’s the wonderfully strange score by Mica Levi which swaps orthodox biopic score swellings for sombre piano thuds and warped other-worldly sounds that carries over the peculiarity of her magnificent work on Under the Skin. The soundtrack perfectly conveys the simultaneous sense of shock and overwhelming grief that permeates the film as a whole.
Most movies come and go without making much of a lasting impact, providing entertainment for their runtime but not much more than that. Jackie is no such film. It’s a stunning combination of performance and mood that makes for a singularly powerful cinematic experience that isn’t easy to shake from the mind.
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