Great Film, Flaws and All; But Did it Achieve what it Set Out to Do?

Rating: 10/10 (5 March 2005)

I first saw "JFK" in Germany, with the same German actor who dubbed Costner in "Dances with Wolves" dubbing him here as Jim Garrison. All of the New Orleans accents were obviously lost, along with half of the flavorings that Stone used to make the incredible amount of information go smoothly into the ears of an American audience. Just the same, I was hooked by this film and recognized it as one of the most important films ever made, along with its flaws, not to mention a great way for Americans to finally see in detail the Zapruder film.
In my travels throughout Germany, I ended up in Berlin as a doctoral student and to my surprise, discovered that my Berlin school had a John F. Kennedy Library, where I spent much of my free time. With great German efficiency, this library had a pristine copy of the Warren Commission transcripts displayed in a prominent place and I proceeded to read carefully the first four or five volumes, while scanning the rest. It was an ironic backdrop to read the transcripts here because I know our American press has taken great pains to downplay the Kennedy Presidency, even attacking Kennedy's character. I don't think most Americans are aware of how much West Berliners loved Kennedy, dare I say even more than their own German leaders. Kennedy, after all, saved West Berlin on more than one occasion.
In light of Oliver Stone's film, one sees clearly even more bizarre things about the Kennedy assassination as depicted in the Warren Commission transcripts. No, even if you were taken by it, Stone's version of events should never be taken as anybody's final word about the assassination--it is a Hollywood film. Tom Wicker's claim that it is propaganda does not do it justice either. Propaganda is deliberately and consciously misleading an audience in an attempt to beguile them toward a political end. How could anyone think that Stone's beliefs weren't genuine? But the film is flawed. It's hard to believe Stone read the Warren Commission transcripts. If he had, some more details might have proved valuable to his essay. For example, I was absolutely floored when I read Oswald's mother's sprawling testimony in which she states that she believed that her son was an agent for the United States and was recruited when he joined the Civil Air Patrol, although she couldn't say how and didn't name David Ferrie (he is mentioned only superficially in the transcripts). She goes on to explain that there was another picture of Oswald with his rifle raised above his head, but that she and Marina burned it in their hotel room the night of the assassination (which would tend to disprove the theory that those photos were faked).
Critics of the conspiracy theories also can't believe that a great American like Earl Warren would have participated in a cover up. The truth is, many of the Warren Commission members didn't show up regularly to the hearings and when Warren was absent, Alan Dulles (the ex-CIA Director that Kennedy fired) ran the investigation--an important detail that is too often overlooked. Details of how President Johnson, the Warren Commission, and even the 1977 HRSC investigation was manipulated via a sophisticated method of kibbitzing can be found in the new book by Jim DiEugenio and Lisa Pease ("The Assassinations," Feral House, 2003).
Besides the information from the Warren Commission transcripts, Stone could have taken more time to explain specifically and precisely how the Bay of Pigs fiasco provided the means and motive for the assassination. It was only in Stone's movie about Nixon that the secret team of Cubans (named by Stone as "Track One"; perhaps the same group known as "Operation 40," which was probably designed to be a post-Castro Cuban intelligence organization) came to light. Americans should always remember that Eisenhower passed the planning of the Bay of Pigs invasion to his Vice-President, Richard Nixon, thinking that Nixon would win the Presidency in 1960. Important details of Nixon's plan (i.e., Operation 40 or Track One) were withheld from Kennedy. This wasn't simply an inept operation; it was the crux of the Kennedy Presidency: "who's in charge here?" Stone also tries to downplay the incident with Sylvia Odio as a staged event, when in actuality, this could be a big piece to the puzzle. Oddly enough Stone shows the Gary Oldman Oswald talking to Odio and the fake Frank Whaley Oswald later with the same Cubans, calling Odio from a phone booth. Odio swears she recognized the real Oswald with these Cubans visiting her house.
As entertainment, the success of this movie is off the charts. Unfortunately, it doesn't entirely succeed what it sets out to do: reverse the course of history like no other film has ever done. Stone has put a dent in the American dialog about the assassination of JFK, but unfortunately he can't put the matter to rest. A few years ago, when Governor Jesse Ventura stated that he believed the military industrial complex conspired to kill Kennedy, TV journalists Chris Matthews and Matt Lauer both rolled their eyes and publicly crucified him. Matthews even gives us the tired old adage (source unknown) that people who believe in a Kennedy assassination conspiracy were "educated on a bar stool" (a variation of which is used in Clint Eastwood's 1993 "In the Line of Fire"--perhaps a cryptic rebuttal to Stone). Had Stone's film succeeded in what it set out to do, all of us would be able to state the assassination of John F. Kennedy was, as Rudolf Augstein has said, the most important political assassination since Julius Caesar and anyone who believes American democracy is important would recognize Kennedy as a President of the same stature as Abraham Lincoln, not because of his abilities, but because he stepped into his job at a crucial test of Democracy--did he really fail?