Another film I saw awhile ago bothered me even more than Manchester by the Sea.  It’s Jackie, the post-JFK assassination story of how first lady Jackie Kennedy (Natalie Portman) reacted to her husband’s horrible killing and spent the next week trying to protect his legacy during a time of national mourning.  The real history of this time is understandably chilling and depressing, but the film seems to make it worse.  I found it to be ghastly and ghoulish and cannot recommend it to anyone.

Pablo Larrain’s film seems to be historically accurate; I’m certainly not an expert on this time, nor the event itself.  Chronicling the following week would seem also to make perfect dramatic sense.  Not all of the story is set during this week; it is framed by Jackie meeting with a pushy journalist (Billy Crudup) some time later to put things into perspective (based on a Life magazine profile).  It is Jackie who hits on the idea of using “Camelot” as a metaphor to define her husband’s presidential legacy, as she insists he loved that musical.  Indeed, the best thing about the film is hearing the Broadway recording of Richard Burton singing “Camelot” in its entirety as she bustles around the White House.

Is the movie well acted?  I’m not sure.  I wouldn’t have thought that Bobby Kennedy (Peter Sarsgaard) was as wishy washy as he is portrayed here.  And Jacqueline Kennedy always seemed to exude a warmth to me, which is conspicuously lacking in Natalie Portman’s acclaimed portrayal.  Oscar nominee Portman plays Jackie as the coldest of cold water fish, swimming in her own orbit, unwilling to listen to anyone except trusted assistant Nancy Tuckerman (Greta Gerwig), Bobby Kennedy and an elderly priest (John Hurt).  She chain-smokes, then insists to anyone around that she doesn’t smoke at all (trying to rewrite history even as she makes it).  I couldn’t stand her.

The film itself is gloom and doom (understandable, considering the circumstances), but we rarely see any real humanity — one exception is the scene in which Jackie tells her kids that their father isn’t coming home anymore.  The film obsesses on gruesome details at the expense of real storytelling and wants to defend Jackie’s singlehanded, coldblooded efforts to consecrate her husband’s legacy.  That she succeeded is history, yet this movie makes her actions seem duplicitous and sanctimonious.  Perhaps that is the way this all took place, but I don’t view that in a positive light, and the movie sure seems to.  I found this film misguided, strident and often plain dull.  ☆ ☆.  24 January 2017.