Jackie

Another solo viewing for Cecil, this time in a fairly busy Glasgow Film Theatre

Cecil says: I have to say I thought Natalie Portman was excellent in the role of Jackie Kennedy in Jackie. I haven’t really enjoyed her acting or her parts in other films I’ve seen, but for me she captured the mood perfectly of the former First Lady through her first week or so of grieving after JFK’s death.

This film is all about bereavement, especially when your loved one was in the public eye, so it won’t be a barrel of laughs you’ll get when you see it.

I chose to go to see Jackie on a gloomy afternoon in Glasgow at the exact moment Trump was being inaugurated as the next President of the USA. It seemed a poignant moment to see a film like this, and while the Kennedy Beautiful People were potentially the start of everything (the ‘swamp’) Trumps says he wants to get rid of in Washington, there’s something about the values JFK stood for that feel a million miles away from what we have in America today (and I mean today 20 January 2017, not 19 January and the eight years previous to this day).

It was also an appropriate time to watch Jackie, as the added burden of being the widow of the head of state meant she had to vacate the White House pretty damn quickly, with no period of grace the Obamas have just had. So we watch how the removal guys move in and Jackie lives with fears of being destitute in the future (as, we are told, happened to Lincoln’s wife after he was shot). It’s all very well knowing that she would end up with a multi-millionaire, but at the time, that would have been a major concern for her personally and for her kids.

The film cuts constantly between the journalist who has been sent to write a feature on Jackie and his interview with her, the flashbacks of her memories from the fateful day (plus a rather interesting TV broadcast she did to show the American people the inside of the White House back in 1961), and the practicalities of organising the funeral, what form it should take and how to protect the kids.

Billy Crudup was good as The Journalist (Theodore White, though he is never named), but this film is all about Natalie Portman, and she is surely in line for an Oscar nomination for this performance.

Apart from the horrific moment of JFK being shot in the head, though, this is not a tear-jerker or heartstring puller. Maybe that is the numbness of grief, or maybe it is because the whole story is really the telling of the tale for the journalist, who inevitably takes away the emotion from the copy.

Whichever it is, Portman is good; LBJ comes across as heartless and power-hungry, and Bobby Kennedy as a protective brother-in-law who is all too conscious of how things will look in public. “They’re blaming me for getting LBJ sworn in in Dallas”.

To go home from this to watching Trump getting sworn in, I felt more grief sitting in front of my telly than I had in the cinema. Hats off to Portman, though, for this one.

Oh, and final shout out for John Hurt, who played the Irish priest admirably. So good to see him back on the big screen. Great to see there are roles for him still, and long may that continue.

***.5