Jackie
Feminist Rating: ♀ ♀
Overall Rating: ✮✮✮
There are many problems with Jackie but the most damning problem is that it is split into two separate parts, one completely out-performing and out-weighing the other in every respect.
One part of the film takes place after the assassination of JFK and the other takes place before. In the scenes which take place in the aftermath, Jackie is being interviewed by a reporter who obviously wants a big scoop but Jackie (Natalie Portman) is understandably reluctant to give him what he wants. However, these scenes are meant to serve as vehicle to offer explanations to keep the audience up to speed. This feels a bit insulting considering the director, Pablo Larraín, does not have any faith that the audience can keep up without being guided through the narrative with continual clarification.
The more dramatic, political, and aesthetically potent part of the movie begins with a surprisingly powerful flashback of Jackie’s appearance on a TV special in which she tours the White House. Compared the grave subject matter that the film inevitably conveys, hearing Jackie’s unique and elegant accent with a practiced smile is almost disconcerting. This segment should have set the stage of the rest of the film but it fails in that regard.
Let us, for a moment, put the disappointing portion of the film aside and focus on its better moments. The film is a reflective piece which features long dramatic (sometimes melodramatic) scenes with a booming orchestral score and dreamlike cinematography. These scenes draw the audience into Jackie’s world. Sometimes she offers long, meaningful monologues while the rest of the scenes pass with no dialogue at all. A recording from Camelot playing eerily in the background while she silently sips wine is more than enough to convey her emotions. We need no explanation.
This world is saturated in dark aesthetics and an almost obsessive attention to detail that is jarringly accurate. However, the far more cinematic and interesting segments mercilessly drag the dull segments behind it as Jackie attempts to explain her feelings and emotions during these moments of her life.
For example, Jackie offers a detailed explanations and insight into her emotions to her interviewer then orders him not to publish it. The problem is, there is no evidence she says any of these things and the fact that they are included in the movie only negates the almost flawless attention to detail found in the rest of the movie. It removes all ambiguity, intrigue, and speculation.
In this ridiculously staged interview, she explains that she wants to control her narrative instead of letting others control it for her. She wants to control how she is viewed by the public but the film consistently portrays her in a very deliberate way that does not feel genuine or accurate. Her actions are not allowed to be a reflection of her character since she is portrayed speaking words that she may or may not have ever said.
The film takes many liberties with her words and none of these words truly convey her emotional complexity. Despite the film essentially revolving around her desire to control her own narrative, she is constantly denied the right. The filmmaker only portrays his own opinion of who she was. Because of the liberties taken in the film, the audience is not allowed to come to their own conclusions in regards to her character because she is portrayed in a very specific way that is not to be questioned.
In some sort of bizarre twist, in her real-life attempt to let her actions speak for her character, she is essentially depicted in the way the director wanted her to be depicted and, in that respect, he controls her narrative. Of course, Jackie is shown to be a strong yet vulnerable woman and sometimes the only woman in a room full of men, but her true character is obstructed by the vision the filmmaker has of her which completely goes against the point of the movie.
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