A Wasted Opportunity

Rating: 6/10 (2 June 2017)

This was such a wasted opportunity. Natalie Portman's performance was superb. No one can detract from that, but it needed something more to make this into a film. You kept waiting for it to get started, but it never did. Things just plodded on for the full length of the movie. As Jackie was the centre of the story, only 2 dimensional cyphers seem to have been recruited to pad out the rest of the cast. Many only had first names. So we played 'spot the historical character' as Bob, Bill, Jack, Dave etc were introduced. Some captions for the uninitiated would have been useful. I have studied the period for 30 years and I was confused. What the casual viewer was supposed to make of this I do not know. Also some characters were unnamed, yet played by totally miscast actors. So I'm only guessing that Clint Hill and Godfrey McHugh were who I supposed they were. There was also a coterie of unnamed women, who were completely unrecognisable. They had about one line each. One may have been Eunice Kennedy. Who knows? Attempts were made to reproduce some historical scenes. Such as the LBJ swearing in. But for some reason some details were omitted. Why was Albert Thomas's sly wink to LBJ deleted? It happened. It's clearly in all the photographs. This raises questions about the whole idea of verisimilitude. What do you keep in, and what do you keep out? Perhaps whole people. Poor Edward Kennedy was deleted again. (Just like in the Kennedy's TV series) For most of the film. Until, someone realised he had to be shown marching in the parade with Jackie and Bobby. Then a mute, unintroduced actor was included. Who was never seen again afterwards. Other people, who Jackie had poor relationships with, like Katzenbach and Hoover were also conspicuous by their absence. Lots of dialogue could have resulted by their inclusion. The real people who were included, Bobby and LBJ, were so lacklustre and unlike themselves that it also did a disservice to history. I get it. This was supposed to be all about one woman. The title said as much. But she did not exist in a vacuum. She interacted with strong ego driven people who made history. Surely they should have been shown doing that. The Director was hell bent on showing her as 'alone' so everyone else had had to be downplayed, silenced, or in some cases erased. One surprise was the first ever correct representation of the effects of the bullets on JFK. This has been misrepresented so many times before that I've lost count. So kudos for that.