Jackie is a
portrait of Jaqueline Kennedy in the period immediately after the assassination
of her husband, President John F. Kennedy. The film is directed by Pablo Larraín
and stars Natalie Portman in the titular role. The film also stars Peter Sarsgaard,
Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup, and John Hurt. I will confess, at the outset, that
I’m not terribly well versed the real history of this period and I can’t speak
to Jackie’s accuracy. That said, this
is a beautiful and touching film that is absolutely one of the best singular
performances I’ve seen in a while.
With respect to the positives, I don’t want to bury the
lead: Natalie Portman is absolutely brilliant in this film. As I watched the
film I honestly saw one of my favorite actresses completely vanish and I only
saw this mourning First Lady dealing with an impossible situation. She is
vocally interesting (and very much like recordings of the actual Jackie
Kennedy) and does so many subtle things with her face and gait that you might not
notice but all contribute to making this feel like the real Jackie Kennedy on
screen. She is the center of this film and carries it on her back every moment
she is on screen. She is strong, she is vulnerable, she is simply brilliant. It
is honestly one of the best performances I’ve seen in a while and Portman
really gives her magnum opus performance in Black
Swan a run for its money.
On top of the brilliant performance by Portman, this film,
as a production, is stunning. The way the settings, props, costumes, etc. look
are incredibly bespoke and transport you back to 1963 in a tangible way and
made this feel all the more like we are a fly on the wall to the actual events
occurring. You believed you were in the residence at the White House, at
Kennedy’s funeral, and at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port. I felt like I
was there for it all and it was a wonderful experience. To add to the
production in an extremely clever way, the film drops in real archival footage
of these events in spots. It does this so seamlessly that it blurs the line
between the actors and reality. Usually when films do this is sticks out like a
sore thumb. In this case, it highlighted the brilliant work they did to
painstakingly recreate these real life moments. It was never jarring and
genuinely made this a better, more beautiful film. The film also brilliantly
uses colors (like pink, red, and black) that powerfully impact the eyes of the
audience and adds to the beauty of the film even more.
The last thing I want to point out in the positives is how
well written this film is. Noah Oppenheim wrote this film (who had previously
only written two young adult adaptations, The
Maze Runner and Allegiant) and
really did a great job. This film is extremely dialogue driven and involves a
lot of flashbacks. The fact that, somehow, that all works is incredible. The
script felt somehow both real and manicured. It really just worked from start
to finish and made this movie what it was.
Jackie is great,
but it is not a masterpiece, nor is it perfect. I think both Robert Kennedy
(Peter Sarsgaard) and John F. Kennedy (Caspar Phillipson), in his limited
scenes, were incredibly miscast and their performers did those castings no
favors. Sarsgaard feels so unnatural in a fairly major role in the film and I
saw no Robert Kennedy in that character. It was frequently frustrated me to
have him in the story as much as he was and did hurt my overall experience.
In addition to those problems, I also found the film to have
an audio balance problem. It is generally pretty quiet and has a couple loud
moments that make sense, but the imbalance I’m referencing is with the score.
Speaking of score, briefly, it is beautiful. It has great string parts and is
enjoyable to listen to. My problem is that they blare it in this film. There
are many moments in the film where, in lieu of the audio of the events, they
see fit to play the score really loudly (louder than much of anything else that
happens in the film). This was so extensive it caused some crackling in the
speakers in my theater. I’m sure part of that is the facility, but it honestly
didn’t need to be that loud. It felt majorly imbalanced and, despite being a
good score, it wasn’t as enjoyable to listen to.
Overall, I really enjoyed Jackie. I think it is brilliant character piece with one stellar
performance at its core. I think it suffers slightly from some poor castings
and performances, and from having weird audio imbalance issues. I still believe
that Jackie is a must see film and I
was moved in moments by how good it was at times.
Ryan’s Score: 8.5/10
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