'Jackie' is an unenlightening portrait of a famous Kennedy
Most biopics of famous people pretty much lay out a life as a straightforward linkage of events. And then there鈥檚 鈥淛ackie,鈥� Pablo Larra铆n鈥檚 mood-memory portrait of Jacqueline Kennedy during her time in the White House leading up to J.F.K.鈥檚 assassination and its immediate aftermath. Starring Natalie Portman, the film both supports and subverts the iconography that has grown up around the former first lady.
In such movies as 鈥淣o,鈥� which centered on anti-Pinochet political maneuverings, or his upcoming 鈥淣eruda,鈥� about the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, Larra铆n has fixated on the ways in which public perceptions clash with private realities. I鈥檝e often found his movies to be fussed-up, with avant-garde posturings, and I鈥檓 afraid 鈥淛ackie鈥� is no exception. This meta-biopic is more about Jackie Kennedy as perceived in the popular imagination than it is about the woman herself. And what Larra铆n has to offer on this score is not terribly enlightening.聽
Portman鈥檚 much-hailed performance strikes me as being essentially a phenomenal act of mimicry, with Larra铆n serving as puppet master. She captures Jackie鈥檚 mincing, tinkly speaking voice and brittle politesse, but some inner emotional core, even in Jackie鈥檚 most resonant moments, as in the weeks after the assassination, is lacking. Larra铆n is not particularly interested in Jackie as a flesh-and-blood woman, and this perhaps explains why Portman, scrupulous and touching as she sometimes is here, comes across as more of a hologram than a person. She seems disembodied 鈥� a Stepford first lady.
The back-and-forth editing of 鈥淛ackie鈥� reinforces the film鈥檚 herky-jerky disorientation. Instead of allowing us to see the transformation of Jackie from White House icon to grieving widow, Larra铆n and his screenwriter, Noah Oppenheim, slice and dice that progression. They want us to feel as discombobulated as Jackie is after Dallas. Larra铆n鈥檚 artiness, if not Mica Levi鈥檚 eerie, ominous score, consistently lowers the film鈥檚 emotional temperature and undercuts Portman鈥檚 performance. Scenes, such as the one in which Jackie blankly looks on while Lady Bird Johnson, as the new first lady, samples fabrics for a White House makeover, are over almost as soon as they have begun. There is but one moment when I felt Larra铆n, to the film鈥檚 advantage, dropped his diversionary stylistic filigree: when Jackie, conferring with an Irish priest (John Hurt), worries that her compulsion to march in her husband鈥檚 funeral is more for her own benefit than for the world鈥檚.聽 聽
Larra铆n wants us to recognize that Jackie was not the fragile flower that so many have taken her for, that there was steel embedded in the silk. He re-creates the 1962 television special 鈥淎 Tour of the White House with Mrs. John F. Kennedy鈥� as a prime example of how she used her position to create a lasting legacy even while her husband was alive. She was a pioneer of political 鈥渂randing.鈥� To this end, Larra铆n overdoes the 鈥淐amelot鈥� stuff by having Jackie obsessively play Richard Burton鈥檚 recording of the hit musical鈥檚 title song. This is hardly a masterstroke of biographical insight.
Jackie鈥檚 media savviness extends to the immediate aftermath of the assassination when, apparently left to her own devices in a deserted-looking compound in Hyannis Port, Mass., she parries the questions of Theodore H. White (identified in the film only as 鈥淭he Journalist鈥� and played by Billy Crudup), who is profiling her for Life magazine. She tells him right off the bat that she will be editing the conversation 鈥渋n case I don鈥檛 say exactly what I mean.鈥� Another time she tells him, after momentarily letting down her guard, 鈥淒on鈥檛 think for one minute I鈥檓 going to let you publish that.鈥�
It鈥檚 understandable that, in these media-soaked times, a director of ambition would want to stretch the limits of film biography and present us with a famous person who is both more and less than her public image. But by losing sight of the person behind the image, he has simply created another false front. Grade: C+ (Rated R for brief strong violence and some language.)
