Jack­ie – first look review

There’s a sequence in Chilean direc­tor Pablo Larraín’s aston­ish­ing Eng­lish lan­guage debut that imag­ines Jacque­line Kennedy roam­ing around the White House gulp­ing Stoli, chain-smok­ing and mourn­ing the loss of her hus­band and her life as she knows. The scene evokes the des­per­ate sad­ness, dri­ving home her grief with a resound­ing profundity.

The dark peri­od short­ly after Jack­ie became a wid­ow is in safe hands here, as the astute and polit­i­cal­ly engaged Lar­raín refus­es to bend to peri­od biopic con­ven­tion. The direc­tor pre­vi­ous­ly showed his adept­ness at bring­ing human­i­ty, pas­sion and a strong sense of time and place to com­plex dra­mat­ic nar­ra­tives with 2012’s No. Here Lar­raín and screen­writer Noah Oppen­heim bold­ly spec­u­late on Jackie’s state of mind through frag­ment­ed mem­o­ries which are ele­gant­ly piece togeth­er to form a rich char­ac­ter study.

With any dra­ma that rep­re­sents real-life fig­ures there’s always the dan­ger that the cast might veer towards ham­my mim­ic­ry. Lar­raín does not allow that to hap­pen and with the cast­ing of Natal­ie Port­man in the lead role, not to men­tion the tal­ent­ed sup­port of Peter Sars­gaard as Bob­by Kennedy and Gre­ta Ger­wig as con­fi­dante and sec­re­tary Nan­cy Tuck­er­man, he thor­ough­ly suc­ceeds in cre­at­ing an inti­mate and grip­ping por­trait of the icon­ic First Lady.

Port­man switch­es grace­ful­ly between putting on a con­trolled pub­lic face and let­ting her emo­tion­al guard down in pri­vate. While speak­ing to a reporter, played bril­liant­ly by Bil­ly Crudup, who nails the cyn­i­cal glances and lead­ing ques­tions of a jour­nal­ist in search of a scoop, she only breaks down once but still edits that out of the arti­cle. Oppenheim’s script paints their inter­ac­tions as two wor­thy oppo­nents engag­ing in a game of chess, as they sit com­bat­ive­ly oppo­site one anoth­er across a din­ing table and on a ter­race. Gerwig’s ten­der turn is of par­tic­u­lar note owing to the nature of her character’s close friend­ship with Jack­ie dur­ing this dif­fi­cult time.

Both Jackie’s emo­tion­al state and his­tor­i­cal lega­cy are placed under the micro­scope as the film lays out the rea­sons for her redec­o­rat­ing the White House, a project that became hap­haz­ard­ly cost­ly. Behind closed doors Jackie’s iso­lat­ed release of anguish is woozi­ly con­veyed via Mica Levi’s (Under the Skin) dis­ori­en­tat­ing string com­po­si­tions; a show­er scene in which the cam­era holds its gaze on Jack­ie as she wash­es blood from her body is par­tic­u­lar­ly haunting.

The atten­tion to detail of the cos­tume design, par­tic­u­lar­ly Jackie’s ball gowns and wool Chanel suits, includ­ing the can­dy pink one she wore the day John was assas­si­nat­ed, is par­tic­u­lar­ly impres­sive. As is the décor of the White House, which is intro­duced via a black-and-white reen­act­ment of a tele­vised 1961 tour of the build­ing led by Jack­ie. It isn’t until much lat­er that Lar­raín shows us the hor­rif­ic ordeal she expe­ri­enced in Dal­las on 22 Novem­ber, 1963 in full detail.

Stand­ing beside her husband’s cas­ket, Jack­ie thinks back to the shock and hor­ror of cradling his head in the motor­cade and Lar­raín expert­ly whisks us back to that infa­mous moment in his­to­ry, thrust­ing dis­tress and pan­ic out of the death­ly silence. Ear­li­er in the film, exhil­a­rat­ing images of the car zoom­ing to Park­land Hos­pi­tal are shown from behind, the black jack­et of Secret Ser­vice oper­a­tive Clint Hill blow­ing in the wind as America’s bright future fades into the distance.