Natalie Gives One of the Best Performances of All Time

Rating: 9/10 (18 January 2017)

This is not a great adventure film or great romance, etc. so some of the reviews have found it boring. However, for myself, who has watched thousands of films spanning the whole history of cinema, Portman's performance is the best and most powerful I have ever seen. The rest of this review references the content of the movie, but is NOT a "spoiler" as the more you know about this famous, historic sequence, the more the film will be enhanced – especially Portman's performance.
Jackie was brought up in a wealthy East Coast family and was sheltered from harshness for much of her early life, was very refined, stylish, charming and intelligent – she married into an even wealthier East Coast family. Then as she sat beside her husband in an open car driving through Dallas Texas, a bullet blasted off part of her husband's skull soaking her in blood as her husband lay dying in her lap.
This is dramatic and traumatic enough, but there were many more layers of emotional complexity. Her husband, JFK, was the President of the United States of America. The event was being televised and watched by millions and would be front page news and on TV being watched by 100 million people - mesmerized by and in shock over the assassination of the President. This was also a profound moment in history. I was in my junior year of college at JFK's alma mater and I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news as does most of that generation.
In addition, JFK was the father of her two very young children and he was now gone and they were now fatherless (She had lost two prior children, one to miscarriage and one was stillborn). Jackie's life was completely changed and destroyed in an instant. She and Jack had great dreams about what they could accomplish in office – that also was now gone. She had to plan the funeral of the assassinated President and do it in the context of history and have it be the right legacy for him (and for her). She had to stand and witness LBJ, the consummate Texan, be sworn in as the new president. JFK and LBJ had been bitter opponents during the primaries and they were completely different, but these strong feelings, including LBJ's resentment of Bobby, had to be repressed.
Scene after scene entailed in this incredible period of trauma had many layers of evolving and, different for every scene, strong emotional complexity. The whole Jackie experience is told by Portman's face, her tone, her carriage, etc. and is on target and powerful and amazing. But it helps to know the history.
We tend to forget that Jackie was inherently very shy and reserved. However, it was discovered that when she was on the campaign trail, the crowds would swell so she became a fixture on the campaign and was loved and besieged by the media and more in the media focus, viewed by millions, than any other celebrity except JFK himself - just another layer to be added to Jackie's portrayal. It was her style and charm that inspired the specific, iconic image of Camelot.
She was being forced, by law, to pack up her and her children's things and vacate her home (the White House) to make way for LBJ and Lady Bird. In a way, she had made it her own home as she had orchestrated an extensive renovation of the White House to fully reflect its rich history – her being "pushed out" was just another layer of loss and abandonment.
I have seen virtually every Best Actor and Best Actress performance except, ironically, Portman's role in Black Swan. Portman was the center of every scene for 90% of Jackie, much of that was done in close-up or semi close-up and virtually every scene was uniquely demanding and very challenging. In a normal script, it's usually clear that an actor has to portray some specific emotion or even a conflict of emotions and a skilled actor is needed to pull this off. However, this was a real life script with unprecedented complexity and special challenges as described above. I was mesmerized by and riveted to watching Jackie - not even aware it was a great performance until the film ended. I gave the film less than 10 because it was not an epic like Dr. Zhivago, but I would tend to give Portman's performance more than 10.