Pablo Larrain’s biopic Jackie is all style and sophistication, in keeping with its subject. The feted Chilean filmmaker’s study of one of the defining moments in American history is a magnificently designed production, with as much attention given to costumes and period trappings as to the tears and grimaces of its central characters.
The 99-minute film opens in chilly Massachusetts in 1963, a week after John F Kennedy (Caspar Phillipson) has been shot in the head in Dallas, Texas. The frostiness in the air has seeped into the tense and combative conversation between Kennedy’s glamorous widow Jacqueline (Natalie Portman) and an unnamed journalist (Billy Crudup), modelled on Life magazine writer Theodore H White. Jackie outlines the rules of the interview – she will edit the text and will dictate what is to be carried and what is to stay off the record.
Does she smoke? Of course not, Jackie haughtily says, clutching a cigarette. When the journalist perilously remarks that she would have had a successful career as a television producer after successfully guiding audiences through a tour of the recently renovated White House, Jackie does not hide her scorn. She says the interview isn’t about her, but about her husband’s legacy as a modern-day King Arthur ruling over his version of Camelot.
The myth-making begins minutes after Kennedy’s death. Larrain’s film, written by Noah Oppenheim, places Jackie at the centre of the events that grip America after her husband’s assassination. The White House, which Jackie has lovingly restored, welcomes a new president, Lyndon B Johnson. Jackie argues with her brother-in-law Robert Kennedy (a superb Peter Sarsgaard) and the security chief about Kennedy’s funeral arrangements – she insists that his body be taken in a public procession to the cemetery despite the considerable risk involved, just like Abraham Lincoln’s. In the midst of her escalating grief, coated with pills and alcohol, the First Lady is the picture of composure as she makes her last bid to assert herself.
Larrain cuts back and forth in time, meshing the narrative with actual and recreated archival footage and a lengthy sequence involving matters of faith between Jackie and a priest (played by John Hurt). Stephane Fontaine’s camerawork alternates between harsh close-ups, which place the characters squarely in the middle of the frame, and unobtrusive handheld shots that glide between the rooms and corridors of the White House. The superb period detail and costumes provide the trappings for a study of power and ceremony, and Mica Levi’s musical score suits the unusualness of the situation.
As an examination of authority and entitlement (Robert Kennedy orders Johnson around, much to the new president’s shock), Larrain’s effort is excessively worshipful. But as a tightly controlled exploration of the pageantry of grief, Jackie works very well, even when the stylisation tips into excess and the close-ups begin to feel more intrusive than intimate. The strong supporting turns, including Greta Gerwig as Jackie’s close friend Nancy Tuckerman, and Richard E Grant as Kennedy aide William Walton, admirably back up Portman’s estimable performance as Jackie.
Portman’s imperiousness is often delivered through half-whispers, and her chic hauteur is marvelously conveyed through her body language and carriage. Objects and artifacts last longer than people, Jackie mournfully observes. Jackie treats its lead character as one such object, both very real in her tragedy and wholly manufactured by her behaviour. When the Kennedys finally depart from the White House, it isn’t just the trunks that are moved out. An artifact of American public life departs too.
