The Myth behind the Man

Rating: 6/10 (22 January 2017)

There is so much to say about Jackie Kennedy, a woman, a pioneer, an Icon, and a first lady that more than anyone else stayed behind the Man and the Myth of her own husband. There is so much to say that certainly a movie cannot contain it all. For this reason the choice of focusing on the days after the death of JFK, and the consequent creation of the Myth of her husband, are certainly the most obvious for the portrait of this woman that worked elegantly through history. Choosing one of the Two interviews that Jackie Kennedy had made after her husband death, the film narrates the first moments after J.F. Kennedy assassination and the consequent creation of his Myth due to his state funeral. Although the double sided interpretation of Natalie Portman, clearly focused on the continuous switch between the Jackie-Persona and the private-Jackie, that gives the audience some brilliant moment of lucid madness, and a performance that hardly can be forgotten (especially for the close resemble of movement and gestures, and the drastic change of voice and character in every different occasions), the movie itself is too revealing and seems to be more focused on the creation of the myth of the man, more than the one of the woman. For instance it is certainly lacking of that aura of discretion and elegance that permitted this woman to became herself The Myth. The directing is interesting, with some brave decisions such as the recreation of the assassination and the first open doors of the white house, and some quick cuts that surely revealed an extended amount of material that didn't fit in the time limit but has to be shown anyway. In Conclusion is a movie that can be easily watch to have another point of view of a recent history, but certainly it doesn't give us those answers that we might have look for and we undoubtedly still have about this great woman that with her elegance and her class charmed not just one man, but the entire world.