Epic Story Reduced to the Size of a Postage Stamp

Rating: Null/10 (21 April 2017)

While it was a noble idea to attempt to depict the JFK assassination through the perspective of the widowed First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, the film came up short due to an overly complex layering of timeframes and flashbacks, plus the absence of careful research into assassination of President Kennedy.
Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" made use of the technique of the interview to recall a range of perspectives on its larger-than-life protagonist. But "Jackie" does not rise to the same level in the mundane sequences between Mrs. Kennedy and the historian, who may be a mélange of William Manchester and Theodore White. Their scenes together seemed flat, and the historian never truly drew the subject into his confidence. Even when the historian bids farewell to Mrs. Kennedy after the final interview, they do not even shake hands.
The film was also untidy with historical details, such as a dramatic moment when Mrs. Kennedy tries to enter the autopsy room at Bethesda Navel Hospital. There is no evidence that such a scene occurred. At this moment, Mrs. Kennedy, still in shock, was being sedated and was on a different floor of the hospital with her brother-in-law Robert Kennedy.
For most viewers, the principal interest of the film will be Natalie Portman in the role of Mrs. Kennedy. While there was good feeling in her interpretation of the role, Portman never came close to depicting Mrs. Kennedy's breathy voice. Despite work with a dialect coach, the East Coast accent was not right either. Physically, Portman was far too thin for the role, and she never conveyed the often statuesque carriage of the public Jacqueline Kennedy.
Some of the design work of the filmmakers was admirable, especially the recreation of the interior of the White House and the street scenes in Washington, D.C. during the assassination weekend. Unfortunately, the design values were not enough to compensate for the inability to truly capture history as it was unfolding from November 22-25, 1963.
The most interesting concept entertained by the filmmakers was the dynamic of how Mrs. Kennedy personally shaped history during the assassination weekend. In one of her interviews, she states that history is what is written, and the final discursive appraisal of history may have little bearing on the truth. The film posits that Mrs. Kennedy placed a carefully designed spin on the way that history would remember her husband, his idealized coterie of Camelot, and, above all, her own image. The theme of how history may be transformed into a myth had unlimited potential for exploration in this film. But results were lackluster.
In the "extra" track of the DVD version of "Jackie," the director Pablo Larraín explained how he diced up his film footage in the editing room to make a complicated cinematic mosaic. But it was unfortunate that the writer and director of "Jackie" did not take an interest in the broader scope of how history was being rewritten in the murder in Dealey Plaza, the Bethesda autopsy, and the machinations that were occurring in the halls of power in Washington, D.C. in the murder of our thirty-fifth president.