"I never wanted fame. I just became a Kennedy."

Rating: 7/10 (24 January 2017)

Oh my, there are two different movies going on here. Millennials watching this picture will by far hail it as a masterful Oscar contender, in particular noting the performance of Natalie Portman. However if you're a baby boomer like myself who was aware of the events as they unfolded on November 22nd, 1963, the movie, dare I say it, is almost a sinful revision of history. I'll get into that in a minute.
I wasn't particularly in favor of the story's framing device using the interview format between the journalist (Peter Saarsgard) and Jacqueline Kennedy (Portman). If this is the way it happened, it would have been a good idea to reveal the journalist's name. But be that as it may, Saarsgard's character seemed almost hostile to me, or at the very least, unsympathetic. A half century ago, a member of the press would have been much more deferential to the former First Lady, and I found some of the reporter's remarks to be crude. For her part, Jackie's domineering attitude was off putting to say the least. In fact, I thought Natalie Portman's portrayal early in the picture came off as forced.
One thing the picture didn't shy away from was Jackie's knowledge of her husband's affairs, but if one isn't aware of his transgressions, the subtlety of those nuances will be lost on the viewer. Stay attentive to her remark about Jack walking into the desert to be tempted by the devil, but always he would return to his family. That's followed by Jackie's rueful response about her husband frequently going astray.
Where I really fell out with the movie was in those parts of the story dealing with the actual events surrounding the day John F. Kennedy (Caspar Phillipson) was assassinated. I mean, even as a kid when it happened, I was aware that the Connolly's were in the same car with the Kennedy's in the Dallas motorcade; in this picture they weren't. During the final leg of the funeral procession with the caisson carrying the casket of the president, young John-John saluted and brought a grief stricken nation to tears with his innocence. It wasn't in here. And where oh where was Ted Kennedy when all of this was going on? Checking the cast list just for the heck of it, I see there was an actor credited as the younger brother, but if he was in the picture, I didn't notice. Pretty poor.
Oh yes, and the grotesque imagery of the President being shot was probably even more graphic than the real deal as depicted in the quite famous Zapruder film of the assassination. Go to Slide #313 of "Image of an Assassination: A New Look at the Zapruder Film" and you'll see what I mean.
So to my mind, the negatives regarding the actual history dealt with here outweigh any other consideration I might have regarding the acting and cinematography. With the announcement just today of the year's Oscar contenders made public, I feel some justification there with the film not nominated for a Best Picture. I don't necessarily disagree with Natalie Portman up for Best Actress, but I think she faces a hurdle.