With a stellar performance by Natalie Portman, magnificent direction by Pablo Larraín, and groundbreaking screenplay, Jackie uncovers the woman behind the most iconic First Lady in history
Many movies try to give you an inside look at a famous figure. They try to show you the real person behind the mystery of their façade. However, very few understand their subject on an intimate level. The portrait that Chilean director Pablo Larraín painted with Jackie has so much color and life and emotion that it may be one of the greatest biopics ever committed to film. Taking place over the few days following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Jackie focuses on the precarious juggling act that Jackie Kennedy had to pull off in the wake of the darkest moments of her life. And while Larraín must be lauded for his accomplishments with the film, Natalie Portman’s tour-de-force performance as Jackie Kennedy, which will go down amongst the great performances of generation, drives the film to its satisfying and haunting end.
In lesser hands, this movie could have been shrouded in melodrama and meaningless dialogue. Larraín doesn’t try to sanctify Jackie. He appreciates her for her flaws — her often self-contradictory decisions, changing performance for the public, press, and staff — and studies how they affected her decision-making. By framing the story from two different angles — Jackie speaking to an unnamed reporter (Billy Crudup) only a week after the events of November 22, 1963 and speaking to a priest (the late-great John Hurt) looking for guidance — we can see her from two completely different emotional states — anger and confusion — as she navigates the political and personal waters that come when a President and husband are killed.
Even though the movie only shows events from the day of the assassination on — save for a few moments before and a recreation of her famous White House tour — Jackie taps into the mind of the third youngest First Lady from the moment she became a Kennedy. As she says in confidence to the priest, “I never wanted fame. I just became a Kennedy.” Her life as a First Lady is perfectly encapsulated in the week following her husband’s assassination. The movie is concerned with the juxtaposition between the performance she puts on for the public, the perception the public has of her, and the private life that she desperately wanted to keep shut. The Kennedys are one of the most enigmatic political dynasties our country has ever seen and Jackie may be the most mysterious member.
Screenwriter Noah Oppenheim — who has only penned The Maze Runner and Allegiant before — pulled together the shattered pieces of Jackie Kennedy’s psyche and assembled them in a poetic non-linear narrative where each scene builds on the last. He doesn’t become distracted by the extraneous details of her marriage to JFK — though there are references — or life preceding her time in the White House. Instead, he concerns himself with how the incredible weight of being First Lady both prepared and disadvantaged her in this unimaginable situation. He brilliantly uses the 1962 TV special A Tour of the White House with Mrs. John F. Kennedy — which Larraín beautifully and meticulously reconstructs — to give viewers a taste of how Jackie was perceived by the public which, as she says, is as “some silly little debutante.” Using her discussion with the journalist, he lets her air out her unfiltered feelings about the assassination — which she vividly describes in tears before saying, “don’t think for one second I’m going to let you publish that” — and funeral. In these scenes, Jackie toes the line between another performance and pure emotional turmoil.
However, her reaction is understandable. Not only did she lose her husband in an incredibly violent way that she had to bear witness to, she has to explain to her kids why their father isn’t coming home, leave her home with no complete sense of what she’ll do next, and plan a funeral that will be watched by millions and attended by some of the highest-ranking people in the world. On top of that, she is asked questions and is pushed to fulfill certain agendas depending on the official without a single person asking how she is feeling. Oppenheim and Larraín often sneak in her anxiety of her future and legacy in the White House by including her fixation on Mary Todd Lincoln, who became destitute after her husband’s assassination.
Between the non-linear structure constructed by editor Sebastián Sepúlveda, the unnerving score by the magnificent Mica Levy, and the singular yet classic cinematography of Stéphane Fontaine — he also shot the magnificent Elle and Captain Fantastic — Jackie is an assemblage of eclectic artists that thrive under the vision of Larraín. However, what they all have in common is the way they’re meant to make you feel — distraught.
No scene pulls together each of those elements and shows the pure brilliance of Jackie — for all its calculated storytelling and piercing dialogue — than a scene with no dialogue, no historical basis, and seemingly no point in the narrative structure. Late at night, Jackie dons her various and iconic dresses and twirls around her private wing in the White House listening to the Broadway cast recording of “Camelot” while drinking vodka and popping pills. It’s an astounding and courageous decision to portray a woman so revered by the country in a raw and emotional state. But it all goes back to the decision not to sanctify Jackie and instead show her as a woman with more weight on her shoulders than anyone should bear at one time.
Almost no one could empathize and few could sympathize — Jackie’s confidant and secretary Nancy Tuckerman (a truly excellent Greta Gerwig) is the only one who comes close — with the situation that Jackie is in. Even JFK’s brother Bobby (Peter Sarsgaard, a standout among the supporting actors) has his own agenda to fulfill. Larraín and Oppenheim finally let Jackie be the star of her own life instead of a supporting role in someone else’s. If anything, the film is groundbreaking for that. However, Jackie is groundbreaking because, for the first time, a filmmaker could empathize with their subject on a level that has yet to be explored in their history. Jackie always hid behind the person she was in front of the camera or behind the role of the First Lady. Still, she wanted to leave her mark. She wanted to have a legacy. Well, for the first time I think that the extraordinary woman that she was had finally been exposed. At one point in the movie, she says, “I believe the characters we read on the page become more real than the men who stand beside us.” Well, whether the story is true or not, I believe that Jackie has shown us the woman who stood beside us.
★★★★★ out of 5
Jackie is available for digital rental on Amazon!
Hey, I'm Karl, founder and film critic at Smash Cut. I started Smash Cut in 2014 to share my love of movies and give a perspective I haven't yet seen represented. I'm also an editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.