Review of Jackie (2016) by David F — 22 Dec 2016

Jackie could easily fall into the usual historical, biopic trap of too much plot and not enough character. This is the perfect blend of both--maybe even a better balance of them, pulling Portman's Jackie to the forefront as the events of history crash all around her. The script's structure is unfairly clever and effective, capturing tone, character, fear, tragedy and elegance. By the end we, like Jackie, are forced to go through a trauma we can never fully recover from.

Shot on film (35mm) with a 1.66: 1 aspect ratio, cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine gives the film a historical presence but allows enough room for the legacy of the woman and the event to remain within reach. It is perfectly matched with the archival footage, bringing the narrative study of Jackie to a historical close at each crucial moment in her life and in our history.

The score from the great Mica Levi (Under the Skin) at parts sounds like most scores with heavy violins and woodwinds. However, Levi works her magic giving the often emotionally apt and revealing score a new emotional center: chaos. It at times is fuzzy, muddled, confused. It parallels Jackie's struggle. As she comes in and out of her dazes the music reminds us of the importance, the legacy and the history she is forced to work through despite the noise invading her every bone.

Portman's performance is truly brave, wrought with precision, grace and vulnerability. It's not just another accented impersonation. It's so much more, though it must be noted how carefully she lands that accent. I recognize in the soft quiet of her voice what despair and hopelessness remains.

By her side is a surprisingly moving Peter Sarsgaard, who has never left a big impression on me. That may be precisely why his casting as Bobby Kennedy is perfect. Bobby was a knight--chivalrous, kind and a public servant. Sarsgaard captures his modesty and hopelessness in the face of crisis, masterfully. Like Portman, and the cast in large, Sarsgaard is well above an impression.

What takes Jackie to knew heights is that it is as much a psychological drama as it is a historical fiction. Screenwriter Noah Oppenheim's writing presents a vision of the facts with a deeply moving portrait of a broken, grieving woman. What the screenplay hints at subtlety and is further intensified--still subtly but more affectingly--by Larraín's direction is the effect the trauma of her husband's death is taking on her life. Jackie Kennedy, as presented here is clearly experiencing PTSD. It is reflected in Portman's performance--also subtle and necessarily so--as well as in Larraín's direction and the editing.

While watching the film I was reminded of another film, Steven Soderbergh's The Limey. Like Jackie the film deals with grief. I have argued that the use of continuity and discontinuity in the editing of The Limey reflects the protagonist, Wilson's, grief and how it subsequently affects his memory. Despite not having as non-linear a story as The Limey the construction and deconstruction of Jackie's narrative gives all the signs we need to see a woman crumbling after trauma.

Perhaps the most obvious evidence is the film's narrative through line--her tug of war with the journalist (Billy Crudup). He wants to hear about the events--the truths. Jackie mocks him knowing he wants a "moment-by-moment account." She continues in her strength, "You want me to describe the sound the bullet made when it collided with my husband's skull." We see her preparing for the day her husband will be shot but don't see that event take place. Instead she recounts, verbally, to the journalist the accounts exactly as she suspected he would want. She's trying to gain the upperhand. She's trying to protect herself from the experience.

Then he asks her the very question she mocked him with earlier: "What did the bullet sound like?" And then she's trigger--we hear it, see her husband shot and then she's back on the plane, crying, wiping blood off her face. It's moments and transitions like this that take the film to another level. At first it suggestions a trigger--sounds as well as other unique sensory items are common for sufferers of PTSD--but it's not filmed like a psychodrama like and out of focus trip or anything like that. It's as real a transition--one reality to the next--linked in time only by a shared fear that haunts her at each remembrance.

In the climax--or at least the most emotionally explosive moment--we finally get to experience that trauma with her. We hear her speak about it. She's still suffering but can at least speak of the thing that has tormented her. But we don't see it--the blood and brains spilled out on her lap or hear the sound of the bullets. She's dealing with her trauma but, as she tells the priest, the memories are mixed in with all the rest.

None of this would be possible without Natalie Portman who gives one of the best performances of the decade and, certainly, of her career. The key to her performance, and the aspect that I connected to, was the dissociative state she appears to be in throughout the post-assassination events.

Dissociation is a common reaction to trauma. To say it is simply an out of body experience is to simplify a very complex and interwoven experience. Trauma victims dissociate to escape. It's not always wanted but it's the mind's way of keeping them safe. You see it in Jackie in the way Portman stands wide-eyed and unresponsive to the goings on around her. She has to blink herself back to reality even when she seems to be living in it. She has to repeat the things people tell her just to keep focus.

Larraín shoots the film to reflect this dissociative state. One of the key components of dissociation is the collapse and expansion of time. It can make moments last hours. Chunks of time forgotten that you know you've gone through. The emotion lingers whether you're in this room or that. There's too much swirling around in your head. Everyone has this experience at some time or another--"zoning out"--it's just more intense and more frequent in both occurrence and duration. The intercut narrative displaces time reflecting this pattern but even in the linear story of the post-assassination, time is displaced in other ways even when it moves forward. The use of jumpcuts within a scene show how she exists in many places and at many times. This is done specifically in the scene with Jackie going through all the rooms in the White House late at night. Was it at night or during the day or both? For how long? She can't tell and neither can we.

Jackie is a story of trauma and legacy. It's full of performances that are full and alive even though many of the people involved are gone. The legacies they've become do not intervene with the humanity they possess and this cast is to be thanked for that first class experience. The elegant and exquisite art direction made history a beautiful reality. Mica Levi's score is as eerily present as Under the Skin's but hear it adapts to its form--not distracting, but just as inventively haunting. The cinematography reminds us that, despite how much we're seeing, so much of history, and of this woman, is boxed in.