Oscar Bait with a Little Extra

Rating: 8/10 (28 December 2016)

It seems whenever December rolls around there comes a usual glut of Oscar contenders which, for better or worse end up dominating your local cineplex, just around the time you're in the mall doing some last minute shopping. These pretty ponies are almost always saddled up with tried-and-true story elements sure to grab some Academy attention whether they be, harrowing true life tragedies, soporifically obvious vanity projects and/or exercises in Hollywood navel-gazing.
Jackie certainly tics a few of those boxes off, bringing you a virtuoso performance by an established American actress playing a real life person, in this case Jackie Kennedy Onassis. Yet Jackie isn't just satisfied giving audiences the Epcot version of what you'd expect. No this movie piles a whole other layer of insight and poise to the Oscar procession this year.
Jackie jumps around, over, and in-between the weeks following the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Stoked with uncomfortable closeups and a discordant soundtrack, Jackie's (Portman) POV is exhaustively recounted whilst talking to an unnamed journalist (Crudup). Piece by piece, we cobble together Jackie's mindset after the assassination. The mindset of a bereaved wife and mother complicated by the duties of a public servant, the social pressures of family and administers and her own desire to preserve what became known as Camelot.
The film variegates in a few key scenes, with Jackie introducing a film crew (and the country) to new White House renovations she oversaw years prior. She displays an uncomfortable poise with all the fuss and attention; laboring to make her points clear amid interrupting questions and her own Long Island lockjaw. People who remember the Kennedy Administration no doubt remember her interview/tour of the White House as an introduction - Camelot as a place of legend. Jackie builds, forges and maintains this legend; first during the tour, then during the funeral and presumably at every point in-between.
Yet Jackie is not the story of a callous woman looking to save face - or at least not just to save face. Her controversial plan for a funeral procession through D.C. and burial at Arlington National Cemetery is imbued with a swirl of sorrow and regret which she tries and fails to avoid. "I could have saved him," she says finally. Her grief seems etched in her face like wrinkles of scar tissue. Through Natalie Portman's performance alone, it's easy to make comparisons to the quiet dignity of The Queen (2006) or the dilettantism of The Iron Lady (2011).
Yet Jackie isn't just a solo act. It's a delicate dance between Portman and director Pablo Larrain who's camera invades her world with the intensity of a gadfly. We're close, so close to Jackie and to a lesser extent Robert Kennedy (Sarsgaard) that the walls of gold she builds as protection can't help but depress under the weight of her sorrow and the director's prodding. Larrain, whose previous work includes the fiery docudrama No (2012) uses some of the same techniques here to pierce through the veil of the Kennedy legend. Yet while the events of No were personal to the director, Jackie feels more like a curiosity. A movie whose subject is just out of reach and in some cases being exploited for the sake of good cinema.
What results is a movie that feels like we're an outsider, briefly and suddenly given access to a person's most trying moments. We wade into the wells of sadness, we peek into the bitterness and gasp at the trauma all the while Jackie struggles everyday to find the strength to carry on. She eventually finds such strength, largely through being a keeper of the flame to a complicated political dynasty.