Jackie Kennedy gets fresh treatment in new film

It’s been a good decade or so since I wrote theater, or movie criticism, and while it was always a source of great delight to discover new talent or to see old classics served with a new twist; as my homes, and interests moved, so did my subjects, and the march towards political analysis and reporting became my new hallmark. But, a recent viewing of the movie, “Jackie” gave me the old itch for a review.

First of all it’s an excellent movie, somewhat traditional in its approach, but with the advent of technology, it manages to deftly insert actual video footage of Jacqueline Kennedy, interspersed with Natalie Portman’s portrayal of the winsome, reserved, mercurial, and strong willed woman that she was. Concentrating, on the assassination in Dallas, and the week afterward, when she attempts to construct the legacy of those 1,000 days, that she named Camelot, the use of flashback is given a real life twist with the use of a reporter - in real life Theodore White -  who Jackie asked to come up to put a positive spin on what many saw as a huge blot on the American consciousness. The results were published in LIFE magazine, and has Jackie framing her husband as a hero, despite the horror, and loss, in Dallas, as it jointly ushered in the modern American presidency.

The memories are fresh, and the wounds raw, as Jackie, a fierce protector of her privacy, opened herself up to do this interview, a last act of service for John F. Kennedy (portrayed by Danish actor Caspar Phillipson), her beloved husband, and the nation’s fallen president. While in reality, White drove up to the Kennedy compound in Hyannis in a pouring rainstorm to meet the grieving widow, not the sunny day, portrayed in the film, Portman, reminiscent of Katherine Hepburn, with her range of dramatic emotion, alternatively shows Jackie’s aristocratic side, along with the tragedy that has etched itself on her features, and made her a fierce warrior and image maker.

When the White figure raves about those magical, and imaginative, White House parties, Jackie, the character, looks at him with a mixture of disbelief, and almost near disdain, and drawls in response, one eyebrow slightly raised, using that low alto, and whispery, voice, (that was so uniquely hers, and which Portman captures so well), “You want me to give parties?”

The film shot in France and in the United States, is by Chilean director Pablo Larrain, (his first English film) and the script written by the Today show’s executive producer, Noah Oppenheim, uses about 99 percent of Jackie’s actual words captured in memoirs, the more responsible biographies, and her taped interview for the JFK library with Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., is destined to become a classic. Considering its accuracy, it also reveals much about the very private Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, who in actuality dreaded moving into the White House.

As she famously said, after the Inauguration, “I feel as it I have just been turned into a piece of public property,” but later learned to love her role as First Lady, and the “old house” that she refurbished with authenticity, and historicity. As the film character states, “I raised every penny for that restoration,” with the first ever White House guide book, and when needed, charming such people as Walter Annenberg, Jr, for the donation of the famous, and very valuable, painting of Benjamin Franklin, by David Martin, that hangs in the Green Room.

In that famous televised tour of the White House, she showcased the results, and as the script demonstrates, her fervent belief in showing the American public not merely, redecoration, but a history of the American presidency, and an artistic legacy not only that they could be proud of, but so richly deserved.

A read of those better bios: J.B. West, “Upstairs at the White House,” Letitia Baldridge's “Of Diamonds and Diplomats”, and books by Carl Anthony, and Sally Bedell Smith, to name a few; plus some of the candid,but but not bitchy, remarks of those who knew her well equally support the picture of a dynamo of a woman. She was also both of her time, and beyond her time, and had steel behind her lace. West, said she was one of the most determined people he had ever met.

Jackie could also be fey one moment, and an intellectual powerhouse, the next; then a fashion icon, and tastemaker, soon after.. Her fluency in French could also give her the assurance to dismiss a professional translator at that famed dinner in Versailles in 1961, so that Jack Kennedy would be understood by the often frozen visage of President Charle de Gaulle.

Natalie's Jackie also has Miss Porter’s famous graduate, throwing a well-aimed F-bomb at Peter Skarsgard's version of Bobby Kennedy, when she discovers Lee Harvey Oswald’s televised murder the day she took her children to the Capital for JFK’s lying in state. She has been well-documented as a fiercely protective mother, and the script has her say, “John and Caroline are all that I have now!”

Skarsgard's Bobby is a bit cool and withdrawn even for a grief stricken portrayal, and I was a bit bewildered that he did so little, except to look handsome in a Gary CooperIsh way. But, then since it’s Portman’s show most of the auxiliary characters are given a two-dimensional treatment, including Jackie’s formidable mother Janet Auchincloss, her devoted aide, and former prep school and Vassar roommate, Nancy Tuckerman; Lyndon Johnson; and a rather one dimensional portrayal of Lady Bird Johnson, who practically screams, ‘Welcome to Dallas darling,” on the tarmac at Love Field, on that fateful day. It seemed like a Southern woman, giving a performance as a Southern woman, by a Southern woman. Baffling, to be sure  - true to life as the actress Beth Grant is from Alabama - but also discordant, as well as irritating.

John Hurt as “The Priest” that Jackie consults to try to understand Jack’s death and God’s role is both painful and intimate, giving the film a gravitas, and an insight into the very real woman underneath the facade of her role. Hurt with a lilt of an Irish accent, at one point, I found amusing as he struggles to deal with this intense woman, and questions why they even go the gravesite, is alarmingly familiar as he struggles to help., Yet the accent made me wonder if every Roman Catholic film priest has to sound like Barry Fitzgerald.

Returning to the crafting of the Kennedy Years, Oppenheim revealed in an interview with Deadline’s Mike Fleming that he felt that Jackie had not been given “the credit she deserved for being a public relations genius and a master of image sculpting.” This picture dispels that omission, and also supports her own early heartfelt and youthful desire to be the “art director of the twentieth century” as she wrote for her Vogue Prix de Paris contest, which she won, but later turned down. In that essay, she described the artists and writers whose paintings she would have, and books she would read.This  “puckish” remark as historian Michael Beschloss called it, came to life as a service to her husband, the nation, and ultimately to herself.

Portman gives an Oscar worthy performance and will undoubtedly become one of her standout roles in her repertoire --- and while she looks less like Jackie, and more like her sister Lee Radziwill, her performance is flawless as she carries the range of emotion, and is in practically every scene. Performances of this kind especially with famous contemporary figures can flag, from immersion, but Portman never stumbles.

One of the hallmarks is the recreation of the Kennedy private quarters in the White House, Jackie’s bedroom, and the West SItting Hall, are given authentic strokes as well as the luscious color - reminiscent of the emerging color of the time --- just a bit beyond the more garish technicolor of earlier years. Interestingly enough most of the interior was shot in a film studio just outside Paris, and Larrain’s staff scoured the world for genuine antiques and artwork - mostly accurate; although not all of Jackie’s art collection was in the public domain, and a keen eye caught some substitutions.

While a soupcon of profanity and some details of a bloodied Jackie and JFK’s shattered skull, prevent this from being a family movie, it’s doubtful that this year end entry will quickly be forgotten, for as many of us noted at the time, our sincere loss of ideals and youth, and vigor. But, perhaps no one said it better than “the legendary columnist and Kennedy admirer Mary McGrory [who] declared disconsolately to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then a Kennedy aide: “We’ll never laugh again.” Moynihan replied: “Heavens, Mary, we’ll laugh again. It’s just that we will never be young again.”

America at the crossroads: Violence is tearing us apart

In the aftermath of Orlando, and now Dallas, and the ongoing gunplay in Chicago, it should give us pause about the increasing violence that plagues America. While there can be no doubt that there is, and was, a history of mental illness on the part of the former, Omar Mateen, the latter had a profile that demanded an intervention.

Angry, violent and demanding attention from already overburdened teachers, Mateen would not cooperate with them, until he got their undivided focus. Without he would attack his classmates and threaten them - and this was in grammar school.

Whether this rage stemmed from repressed homosexuality, or an urge to always, and under any circumstances to have his way. Reading these facts one wonders where were the school social workers, the psychologist,and the parental concern, as this walking time bomb erupted, later as an adult at the Pulse nightclub.

For many, it seems, mental health is the stuff of movies and late night television, and not the stuff that reality is made of. In other words, crazy people scripted for the camera, and not real life; as easy to dismiss as leaving the darkened movie theater. But, mental illness is as real, and as palpable, as the days are long, yet many Americans have failed to grasp the enormity of unaddressed problems, and how they must be addressed.

After the memorials are gone, and the headlines changed, we move on as a society, yet the failure to address in a multi-pronged manner those that suffer can result in carnage, whether it is Mateen, or Oklahoma bomber, Timothy McVeigh. The problem before us demands attention, yet, when discussing the motives, often the response is “Who cares”? We must, in order to address public safety.

We need a multi pronged approach that encompasses teachers, school social workers, local agencies and government agencies, on all levels, including a revision of FBI protocols and best practices, that won’t allow someone like Mateen to slip through the cracks. The goal is good mental hygiene, as much a concern as good medical care.

The Leviathan seems to be the National Rifle Association, and its powerful lobbyists are ruling the day, but are losing the care that we must embrace as a nation. Many wondered at the deaths of grammar school children at Sandy Hook Elementary, if there would be a change, yet their hearts remained hardened.

Both Orlando and Sandy Hook show that the targets, in many cases, are the most vulnerable of our population: children, and sexual minorities - targets for gun violence. For Chicago, where racial segregation has been historic, can there be a beginning to what has been a tortuous and long-losing struggle to quell economic justice? Can there be an end to where those who fought the enemy, and came home to a dream of freedom, and bought their homes in the first flush of a post war era, find themselves nearly held siege, and where black on black crime spares no one, not even children, or babies.

For Micah Johnson, the Dallas cop killer, a tour of duty in Afghanistan -- possible PTSD? -- seems to be the trigger for his violent departure from a tradition bound middle-class life, to one where he stockpiled weapons, with a history of egregious sexual aggression.  With such a sudden departure from his general temperament, and personality, could no one, no family member seen the dramatic change, and become suspicious?

Each day, it seems, we are confronted with the drumbeat of violence, unceasingly,  and maybe, for those that are desensitized, inexorable? The sites of the carnage have almost replaced Lexington and Concord, once seared into our historical consciousness, as American battlegrounds.

If the road ahead, is the one less travelled, then new solutions, and new ideas must be brought to stem the tide, and brought to bear on the challenge that faces America..