Jackie

I'm a little out of sequence, as we screened this before Their Finest. I'd read the reviews and wanted to see this very much, so I was delighted when we decided to screen this and in no way disappointed when I saw it.

Here are my notes:

Jackie

USA 2016        100 minutes

Director:          Pablo Larrain

Starring:            Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup and John Hurt

Awards and Nominations

• Three Oscar Nominations including Natalie Portman (Best Actress) and Mica Levi (Best Original Music)
• Three BAFTA Nominations including Natalie Portman (Best Actress) and Mica Levi (Best Original Music)
• A further 39 wins and 146 nominations

“…an astonishing, inside-out revision of the Kennedy mythos that can instantly be filed among the greatest of all White House biopics. Examining and cross-examining Jacqueline Kennedy in the days following JFK’s assassination, it’s at once a skin-grazingly intimate study of a glittering facade’s wrecked interior, and a wider, more searching consideration of how historical legacies are built, maintained and potentially dismantled. Assisted by the icy, stealthy gaze of Larrain’s camera and the eerie, keening strings of Mica Levi’s score, Portman’s unabashedly heightened portrayal redesigns an icon as an alien.”

Guy Lodge

 

In a series of interviews with an unnamed journalist (Billy Crudup) Jackie Kennedy (Natalie Portman) tells of her experiences of life in the White House with President Kennedy, the events of his assassination in Dallas, and the subsequent period as Lyndon B Johnson took over the presidency.

The film was initially conceived as TV mini-series covering the four days between Kennedy’s assassination and burial, with Steven Spielberg as producer. When this fell through the script was reworked screenplay for a feature film with Rachel Weisz in the title role and Darren Aronofsky as director. This lapsed when the two ended their relationship, and it finally went into production with Aronofsky as producer, Natalie Portman (who had won an Oscar for her performance in Aronofsky’s Black Swan) as Jackie Kennedy, and Pablo Larrain as director after Aronofsky had admired his award-winning Spanish film The Club (2015).

Pablo Larrain is an award-winning Chilean film maker whose work has included both TV series and feature films; among the latter Tony Manero (2008) was screened at the Cannes Film Festival to rave reviews, No (2012) received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, and El Club (2015) won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Jackie is Larrain’s first English-language film, and although he had no experience of directing a biopic and did not have any history or knowledge of President Kennedy’s assassination he stated that he had connected with Jacqueline Kennedy. To him her life after the assassination “had all the elements that you need for a movie: rage, curiosity and love”.

The film received its world premiere at the 2016 Venice Film Festival and was subsequently also screened at the Toronto Film Festival. After it was released in the US to positive reviews it was nominated for three Oscars, including Best Actress and Best Original Score.

John Hurt’s role of the Priest in this film was his last performance released before his death in January 2017.

Here's the trailer: