Review of Chappaquiddick (2018) by Mark P — 28 Sep 2018

Almost fifty-years have passed since the death of 28-yr. old Mary Jo Kopechne in Hyannis Port, but in the movie Chappaquiddick the scene is recreated well using all the time period effects in brilliant Kodachrome.

This was a "Two-buck Teddy" rental from RedBox and had a dark mood from the minute the car went into the water. The media machine and public relations transformer of the Kennedy dynasty handled this tragedy as well as they could have, to deflect and deflate the hysterical balloon created in the late summer of 1969.

It didn't hurt that the nation's focus was on the men of NASA who valiantly traveled to land on the surface of the moon. By contrast to those heroes, Teddy Kennedy was a narcissistic, unfocused, inebriated felon who got away with a minor sentence, later suspended by a friendly judge.

Teddy saved his job as a Senator through manipulating the narrative of the this horrible drowning incident. He looked into the camera telling cue-card spun lies, and turned the aftermath into another Kennedy triumph over the dark curse on their family.

The music and the cinematography lull the viewer into a sinister trance, and as the movie slowly unfolds one day per chapter, during late July 1969, it is hard to remind yourself that a young, ambitious, pretty, devoted political staffer had to drown inside a car while the Senator saved himself and swam to freedom.

Because it went unreported for over 8-hours, and after that the accused Senator managed much of the information disseminated to the captive press, the true story will never come out. The movie has to speculate about who was at the beach party, how much alcohol was used, how long the Senator spent with Mary Jo Kopechne, what happened to the car, what was the driving record, or even if there was an autopsy on the deceased.

An autopsy would have told much about what happened to the young woman in the hours before her death. In today's modern social media, the tale would have been publicized in 80 minutes not 8-hours.

It's hard to watch this piece of history unfold, knowing that Kennedy would go on to one of the longest Senate careers in US history, as well as affairs with many other women, including an alleged torrid affair with Jackie B.

Kennedy in the 1970s prior to her marriage to Onassis, the Greek tycoon. The family pressure from its patriarch, Joe Kennedy was well played in the film and his first word of advice to Teddy when he called him early in the morning of the next day (before calling Edgartown MA police): #Alibi.