A Conspiracy So Vast

Rating: Null/10 (22 July 1999)

I agree with most of the comments already made and so will not repeat the praises of performances, techniques, pace, and so on. I even agree with the comparison to Riefenstahl. As I sat in the theater, I said to myself that this was the greatest piece of propaganda I had ever seen. I meant it as a compliment, for cinema is replete with messages that aim to shift attitudes and manufacture beliefs. Most do not do the job as well as Stone's film.
That said, I have rethought my position. If Stone included so many overlapping and competing theories [and assassins!] in one film, mustn't he have known that each new possibility would dilute the probability that previous suspects were responsible? Think of Oliver Stone in front of that federal jury: just as each new conspirator that Garrison named created a reasonable doubt about Clay Shaw's role in the matter, so too every new "force" that Stone identified made it less and less probable that the list of suspects could conspire successfully. If Stone seems to draw to Dealey Plaza every group of nuts extant in 1963, that makes it hard to understand how they managed not to shoot or at least expose one another.
So, suppose the movie is about how conspiratorial thinking defeats itself. Once a Jim Garrison is prepared to disbelieve official accounts--and, boy, does the Warren Commission invite disbelief!--then vistas of suspects are opened up. If Lee Harvey Oswald is a patsy, his background suggests multiple agencies who could have used him. If one follows the money [as in "All the President's Men" or Jerry McGuire], then a host of powerful dudes stood to benefit from JFK's demise. [Granted, most of the well-heeled stood to profit no matter who was president!]
I appreciated the movie when first I saw it. I enjoy it annually now. I appreciate most the sheer vertigo that ensues when one begins to doubt authorities. I suspect that that vertigo, more than all the citizenship primers ever printed, keeps most of us most of the time within the flock that the authorities assemble.