Tropic Sprockets / Jackie

By Ian Brockway

The outspoken Chilean director Pablo Larrain (No) focuses on Jackie Kennedy, who remains one of the most iconic women of this past century. Photographed and painted by Andy  Warhol, Mrs. Kennedy-Onassis became the premier Pop Art First Lady. Her image was silkscreened again and again by the silver haired art-maker in both happiness and in mourning as if to produce his own Zapruder film and to project her usual warm image onto a canvas, making it flat and commercial—a Marilyn-esque face on a dollar bill.

Again with a singular intensity of  purpose, here is “Jackie,” a film with Natalie Portman in the famous role.  It is a week after the assasination and Theodore White (Billy Crudup) comes to Hyannis Port for an official interview. He is pale and formal. The reporter’s eyes are the color of milky ash, alien and confrontational.

Kennedy begins her recollection telling of her horror and shock. Though The First Lady is in turmoil, she retains her regal civility dressed in a gray sweater. We soon discover there are two sides to Mrs. Kennedy. One of sensuality employing a Marilyn Monroe breathy rush, and the other a declarative fire with a voice that is solid and direct without any trace of flirtation.

Portman portrays the two sides perfectly.

Rather than highlighting episodes, this is an internal character study of Kennedy as she moves through the grim tableau of her life, in the days after her husband’s murder. Instead of dialogue, we often see her moving through an empty Oval Office or a cramped Air Force One.  Mrs. Kennedy insists on the blood stained pink Chanel jacket, wide eyed with shock and disbelief. Everyone is a monster to her. Lyndon Baines Johnson (John Carroll Lynch) seems like a walrus while RFK (Peter Sarsgaard) appears to be a soporific snake. All is suspicious.

With its slow lingering camerawork and excellent cinematography by Stéphane Fontaine this film could almost be a page  from “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”  or a deleted scene from “Black Swan.”  Swan filmmaker Darren Aronofsky is the producer, and he definitely bears an influence on this film.

Throughout the story, The First Lady meets with her Catholic priest (John Hurt) who attempts to give her solace, but his quips are often stark.  Some brief scenes showing John-John near an all-too-happy doll and a rocking chair feel downright eerie and while falling short of a horror movie, the sight of JFK’s pulpy head combined with the sight of Kennedy in the shower, her bloody vertebrae visible and bulging with torment is scary enough.

A transfixed Mrs. Kennedy becomes hypnotized by a row of fashion store manniquins made in her image. To know that she was emulated, her face reproduced millions of times by printing presses and TV screens worldwide makes a cold comfort.

“Jackie” displays a woman made into a being torn, harried, spaced out and restless. It is one of Portman’s best performances to date.

Write Ian at [email protected]

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