Review of Jackie (2016) by Norm D — 30 Mar 2017

Whatever flaws viewers posted about this production, they're likely Instagrammers for whom this seems like ancient history, the day the music really died. Oscar voters missed the call, too; here is your Best Actress. Yes, it's a Portman show; how could it be otherwise, whoever was cast as Jackie?

This is a nicely crafted take on the excruciating hours between the iconic still images everyone knows of November, 1963. Is it accurate? We won't know for sure until the release of materials in 2063. But it's a good imagining cut together with a surprisingly effective editing style. The one problem that seemed to glare was the casting of Bobby. But it doesn't detract from the subject of the story.

For those alive at the time, this film (shot on Super-16 & with that aspect ratio) is good enough to exhume post-traumatic feelings - and the beginning of a sense of the loss of American innocence, a fictional phenomenon that arose among bobby-soxers after WW2, an innocence that wasn't really, as Vietnam would soon reveal. But the times felt innocent when combined with the elegant image of a young'ish war hero president succeeding an older one, a classy, poised, & cultured 1st lady, and a future brimming with man-on-the-moon possibilities. Even the dreaded polio recently had been cured ...