"Jackie": A Film Worth the Ticket Price

By Sarah Snebold on December 5, 2016

Natalie Portman has granted us the pleasure of amazing movies, such as Black Swan and No Strings Attached. Now, Portman has taken on the task of portraying the life and woman of Jackie Kennedy.

In short, the movie follows Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy during the days of her husband’s assassination. Jackie, the iconic First Lady, was known for her dignity and poise. The movie works to reveal a psychological portrait of Jackie struggling to maintain her husband’s legacy and the world of “Camelot.”

Actress Natalie Portman arrives at the 68th Annual Golden Globe Awards held at The Beverly Hilton hotel on January 16, 2011 in Beverly Hills, California. Credit to Elise Lefort.

The movie was released on December 2, 2016 and has already been nominated for various awards, such as: the Golden Lion (Pablo Larrain), the Grand Jury Prize (Pablo Larrain), the Volpi Cup for Best Actress, the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best Young Actor or Actress, the Volpi Cup for Best Actor, the Silver Lion for Best Director (Pablo Larrain), the Venice Film Festival Green Drop Award (Pablo Larrain), and the Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Actress (Natalie Portman).

Pablo Larraín at the 2012 New York Film Festival. Credit to The Back Row Manifesto.

Pablo Larrain is the movie’s director and claimed by IMDB as Chile’s greatest movie director and major producer alongside Sebastian Lelio. Larrain’s films are known to be straightforward, aggressive in nature and with a scattering of violence. This brings us to the beauty of Larrain combined with Portman, as Guy Lodge, film critic, claims, the film is a, “brilliantly constructed, diamond-hard character study.”

The study focuses on Jackie Kennedy as she is conflicted while navigating the landscape of her perspective, legacy and grief that is shared by millions. It is provocative as it provides insight to the upmost private thoughts Jackie faces, featuring marriage, faith, and self-image.

Lodge explains how Portman’s work is complex and flawlessly shaded, which could alienate the viewers who expect “a more conventionally sympathetic slab of filmed history.” It is also Larrian’s first English-language project, which proves his status as “the most daring and prodigious political filmmaker of his generation remains undimmed.”

The film was rated 2.5/4 by Roger Ebert, 87 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and 8.8/10 by IGN.com. Rotten Tomatoes claimed the critics’ consensus to be, “Jackie offers an alluring peek into a beloved American public figure’s private world — and an enthralling starring performance from Natalie Portman in the bargain.”

Roger Ebert critic, Matt Zoller Seitz, gave a full overview of the film, explaining it as two movies. Seitz claims, “One of these movies is just OK. The other is exceptional. The first one keeps undermining the second.”

He explains the first movie as a fictionalized biography. This segment has an important person who contemplates their place in history and attempts to control how they are perceived by the world. Seitz claims this section as fuzzy and overreaching, and that it has been done better elsewhere. He explains the “second movie” as new and powerful, drawing from specifics. This story of “Jackie” is one of a woman suddenly and violently losing her husband, left to resolve her new life without surrendering the sanity and power she once weld.

But, Seitz claims that producer Larrain pushed the “power” too hard, and Portman’s accent-driven performance felt too researched and like a Marilyn-Monroe-breathy impersonation. The phrase that can best summarize the movie “Jackie” is a great film that “keeps fighting to free itself from the clammy clutches of the could-have-been-better, knows-what-is-best-for-us movie. After a while the struggle becomes indistinguishable from the struggle depicted in the movie itself.”

It is clear that critic Seitz wishes the movie went in a different direction.

Jackie Kennedy by VAIN

IGN critic, Alex Welch, gave a different perspective of the film, applauding it as one of the best films of the year. He explains how Larrain and Oppenheim, the writer of “Jackie,” selected the moments of portraying the assassination with a sense of care and understanding. Other filmmakers may have resorted to cheaper tactics in doing so. But Larrain places a trust in the viewer to understand the full magnitude of the emotional effects regarding JFK’s death, without spending much time on the event itself.

Welch praises Natalie Portman’s performance as the best work she has done. Her portrayal of Jackie is not simply as a figurehead within American society, but instead, “a woman dealing with an unknowable amount of tragedy and grief, contemplating on her and her husband’s legacy.”

Welch claims that the small flaws within the film, such as the visual staging of some scenes, are minuscule in the argument of what this film has accomplished. It is an introspective film regarding American history with the beauty and emotion that is hard to find.

Overall, it is clear that the vision by Larrian was complex, as he tried to portray the different stories that encompassed Jackie Kennedy’s life. It is hard for me to call Portman’s performance poor due to an accent that one critic may not have liked. But, with being a critic, the job is to be honest and brutal.

Above all, the film is one worth seeing, as it recalls an aspect of American history in a way that is not common. The viewers, who are not film critics, may be able to take away more respect and appreciation for the film as a story, as we are not drawn to all the details an expert’s eye catches.

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