Jackie (2016, R)

This is an Oscar year similar to 2015, in that only one of the Best Actress nominees is in a film that’s up for Best Picture (Emma Stone in La La Land,) whereas other four films are recognized for Best Actress and very little, if anything else – in the case of Jackie, it’s also nominated for its score and costumes.  The Best Actor race is also a parallel of 2015, since all but one of the male actors is in a Best Picture-nominated film.  What’s odd this year, though, is that it’s not purely a reflection of the idea that “women’s stories” aren’t Best Picture material, since Arrival and Hidden Figures are both female-led, but both have their lead actresses absent in the Best Actress category.  Very curious.

But I digress.  Today’s post isn’t about Hollywood’s gender issues; it’s about Jackie.  Framed by an interview occurring a week after JFK’s assassination, the story flits through the former First Lady’s recollections both of the assassination/aftermath and earlier memories of her time in the White House.  The major throughline is Jackie, in the midst of her shock and grief, desperately trying to preserve Jack’s legacy as president by giving him a funeral for the ages.

Interesting themes at play here.  I like Jackie’s preoccupation with forgotten presidents Garfield and McKinley and her determination that Jack not join their ranks, her efforts to recreate Lincoln’s reverent funeral as closely as she can in a very different world from 1865.  There’s this whole idea of who we are, how we’re remembered, and wondering what our lives will have been for after we’re gone, or even just after the world moves on from thinking about us as it used to (who lives, who dies, who tells your story.)  I also like the running commentary on the media, especially Jackie’s savviness at knowing how the press sees her and how it expects her to be.

I feel like it’s a movie made more of moments than anything else.  It has a number of really well-realized individual scenes, such as Jackie’s confused babbling on Air Force One immediately post-assassination, her grieving us-against-the-world scenes with Bobby, and the careful way she holds and preserves the history of past First Families.  Fitting, perhaps, in a story about a woman working to create a moment, something to be taken out of time that will always be remembered.

Before I get to Natalie Portman, I want to quickly mention the rest of the cast.  While it’s definitely Jackie’s (crumbling) world, it’s well-inhabited by those around her, including Peter Sarsgaard as Bobby, Billy Crudup as the journalist interviewing Jackie, Greta Gerwig (from 20^th Century Women) and Richard E. Grant as White House staff members, and the wonderful, late John Hurt as a priest.  As for Portman, her Jackie is excellent.  I’m getting passed the point where I’m spellbound by an actor expertly mimicking a well-known person, though I can’t deny that Portman’s performance is very faithful – it’s just that, that alone isn’t enough to win me over.  Instead, what impresses me most here are the places where Portman taps into the complex emotions of the grieving First Lady:  her carry-on need to hold herself a certain way before the press, her raw, undisguised horror at her husband’s brutal murder, and her private chances to let her “holding it all together” façade drop and, for a moment, take a rest from looking poised.

Warnings

Brief violence, language, drinking/smoking, and veiled sexual references.