Daily Archives: June 21, 2021

Column, Midwest Film Journal

Natalie’s Rap Sheet: Jackie

Originally posted on Midwest Film Journal

Can anyone understand how it is to have lived in the White House and then, suddenly, to be living alone as the President’s widow?

– Jacqueline Kennedy

Is there a harder job in the world than President? In his English-language film debut Jackie, Chilean auteur Pablo Larraín suggests that the role of The Widow may be even more difficult. When John F. Kennedy’s life was cut short in November of 1963, his wife Jacqueline placed her deceased husband’s head in her lap as the presidential motorcade sped away to Parkland Memorial Hospital. Almost two hours later, the former First Lady stood in her blood-stained pink Chanel suit next to Lyndon B. Johnson on Air Force One as he was inaugurated as the next President. “I want them to see what they have done to Jack,” she insisted to “Lady Bird” Johnson when it was suggested she change her clothes before the inevitable photographs were taken for the historical swearing-in.

An exploration of both grief and legacy as they play out on the world’s stage, the film gives us an unconventional portrait of Jackie Kennedy’s mindset surrounding that tragic day in November. The events before and after are framed around a hazy Hyannis Port morning the week after, when Life journalist Theodore White (played by Billy Crudup) knocks on the door of Kennedy’s new home. Jackie (played by Natalie Portman) demands editorial control over her interview before inviting him in for their emotional exchange about her late husband’s legacy. It’s a traditional lynchpin for biopics, allowing the director to show flashbacks that line up with the subject’s recollection of events. But Larraín eschews the sign-posting to which we’ve become accustomed, scattering the chronology like a nightmare half-remembered after waking up.

We see her public image being molded before our eyes, as she shoots her Tour of the White House CBS special, with White House Social Secretary Nancy Tuckerman (played by Greta Gerwig) instructing her behind the camera on how to smile. We watch her deplane in Texas in that iconic Chanel suit, greeted by Vice President Johnson (played by John Carroll Lynch) and First Lady “Lady Bird” Johnson (played by Beth Grant) amid cheering crowds. After the assassination, she grieves with John’s brother Bobby (played by Peter Sarsgaard) as they process what happened and try to sort out the details of the highly-anticipated funeral. Most intimately, the film includes conversations Jackie had with an unnamed priest (played by John Hurt) shortly after her husband’s death.

Just like Jackie when she was in office, all eyes are on Portman as she attempts to transform into who is most likely the most well-known First Lady of all-time. The first thing that’s impossible to ignore is Portman’s accent work while recreating Kennedy’s highly unique dialect. She goes for a spot-on recreation of her specific timbre, nailing nearly every inflection and catch-breath that the real Jackie exhibited in her many public appearances. Centering around a fashion icon, the movie’s attention to detail in the costume design is almost as important and Academy Award nominee Madeline Fontaine adorns Portman with stitch-perfect wardrobe in every scene. Though Portman doesn’t exactly look like Jacqueline, her voice and outfits go a long way in terms of weaving together the fictional with reality.

But does her performance transcend a fine-tuned impression? I would argue that it almost always does. It’s tricky because she’s playing a character who is always keenly aware of how she is being perceived, so it’s something of a performance of a performance. Portman shines most in the moments that we haven’t seen play out in public view before, specifically her scenes with Hurt’s priest character. It’s here that she’s most candid and most vulnerable, allowing herself to meld most with her tragic character. There are times that her portrayal can feel a bit too mannered and self-conscious for its own good (typically in the historical recreation sequences) but on the whole, this is some of Portman’s finest work. For it, she scored her third Best Actress nomination but lost to temporary Best Picture winner Emma Stone.

Early on, Jackie tells the journalist, “when something is written down, does that make it true?” The entire film grapples with the notion of who writes our history and how we’re to be remembered but more specifically, how little the actual truth might matter compared to the appearance of things. Through TV and print, the Kennedys came to epitomize American excellence and majestic opulence, even though there were plenty less than wholesome things under the surface. There are allusions to Camelot, a musical said to be JFK’s favorite whose line “don’t let it be forgot, that for one brief, shining moment there was Camelot” came to eulogize a Kennedy presidency cut short of its full potential. Was John really that big a fan of the musical? Maybe not but to paraphrase Jackie, the American people love their fairy tales.

The strongest elements of the film collide in its most potent scene, which depicts Jackie aimlessly marching through Arlington National Cemetery on a gloomy fall day while cabinet members argue about the location of his grave. The camerawork from Stéphane Fontaine is full of nightmarish conviction, tracking along with the traumatized widow as the snares of Mica Levi’s music score gallop along with her. She doesn’t know where she’s going but she doesn’t want to waste any time getting there. Jackie fumbles in high heels through the mist of the myth that she and her family have worked to create and preserve. It’s a haunting and indelible image, one of many that make this uneven but unflinching look at fame and misfortune a memorable showcase for Portman’s refined talents.

Reel Views, Review

False Positive

“This pregnancy [stuff] is no joke!”, one mom-to-be proclaims to another over lunch in False Positive, a fitfully inspired but thoroughly distracted horror film about the terrors of new motherhood. The line is courtesy of star and screenwriter Ilana Glazer, departing from 5 seasons of the hit Comedy Central series Broad City to make the transition to film in a more serious role. Though the tone of the material is different than what she’s written before, it would seem to be just as personal and potentially autobiographical, as she and her partner announced a few months ago that they were expecting their first child. Unfortunately, her perspective on the subject is sadly obscured in a script that can’t seem to settle on what it wants to say about bringing a new life into the world.

Glazer stars as Lucy Martin, a copywriter who has been trying for years to get pregnant with her reconstructive surgeon husband Adrian (Justin Theroux). With time ticking away on the biological clock, the Martins call in the big guns by way of top-5-in-the-country fertility specialist Dr. John Hindle (Pierce Brosnan) and his Stepford Wife-like nurse Dawn (Gretchen Mol). Through Hindle’s patented method, a hybrid approach of IVF and IUI, Lucy does indeed become pregnant but the persistent nausea is the least of her new concerns. Difficult decisions about the baby-to-be have to be made early, creating a rift between Adrian and Lucy and causing the latter to find support in the form of the also-pregnant Corgan (Sophia Bush). But no amount of camaraderie can shake Lucy’s feeling that something about her “birth story” is completely amiss.

There’s a shot around the halfway mark of False Positive that sums up Glazer and director John Lee’s thesis statement in one cleverly-composed image. Adrian stands to the side of a reposed Lucy as Dr. Hindle stands behind her over the examination table but the characters’ positions make it appear as though Lucy isn’t actually present with them. As many loose plot threads and thematic ambitions as the film contains, I take its central message to revolve around women’s diminished agency when it comes to birthing decisions in modern medicine. My favorite extrapolation of this idea is the recurrence of the phrase “mommy brain”, blithely uttered by both male and female characters, to dismiss concerns of pregnant women and leave them vulnerable to gaslighting and other forms of manipulation.

But there’s just too much else going on in the film’s lean 92 minute runtime to bring the potency or urgency of that message home. Described in the press as being “a contemporary take on Rosemary’s Baby“, the movie has less to do with Polanski’s pregnancy paranoia tale than something like Midsommar, a horror movie about a woman able to see evil clearly amid a group of men who remain blind to it. Where that film leans into its creepy cult conceit, False Positive asks us to suspend disbelief that Brosnan’s Dr. Hindle could be anything but a mad scientist with nefarious plans. The movie’s back half leans hard into the unreliable narrator trope we’ve seen often in horror movies, culminating with a confusing Peter Pan metaphor and an off-putting ending whose shock value is totally unearned.

Making her first foray into drama, Glazer gives a committed performance in the lead role but all of the other actors don’t seem to have a grasp of the material or the conviction to carry out its concepts. Theroux doesn’t add much to his role as the absent husband and his lack of chemistry with Glazer makes their relationship less credible, especially when one considers the difficult journey their characters have endured together. Brosnan is fine in his villainous role but he can play suave and phlegmatic in his sleep. I would’ve much rather seen this cast, who has more comedic chops than it may seem at first glance, play in a sharply-penned comedy about modern pregnancy anxieties than watch them toil in a boilerplate chiller like this. Underwritten and dependent on tired genre clichés, False Positive would have benefited greatly from a longer gestation period.

Score – 2/5

More new movies coming this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is F9, the latest in the Fast & Furious franchise starring Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez in which Dom and the rest of his carjacking crew square off against his estranged brother.
Streaming on Netflix is The Ice Road, a disaster thriller starring Liam Neeson and Laurence Fishburne about a tough-as-nails big-rig driver who leads an impossible rescue mission over a frozen ocean to save a group of trapped miners.
Coming to theaters this weekend and available to digitally rent the following weekend is Werewolves Within, a comedy whodunnit starring Sam Richardson and Milana Vayntrub about a snowstorm that traps the residents of a small town in a local inn with a lycanthrope.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup