Jackie (2016)

In Jackie actress Natalie Portman announces to the world that yes, she would indeed like a second Oscar. In many ways her choice to portray Jackie Kennedy seemed a little too on the noise, a little obvious, perhaps even a little lazy. Here is a glamorous, sympathetic historical figure, well known, classy, a made to order part for Ms. Portman. Despite this heads up Natalie doesn't glide through the role, she gives it her all in what must have been a very draining shoot.

The story of Jackie focuses primarily on the immediate aftermath of the JFK assassination up through the funeral, with a few flashbacks thrown in, and a framing story set a short while later, where the widowed Mrs. Kennedy is interviewed by political journalist and historian Theodore H. White (Billy Crudup, capturing just the right note). As a result Portman's Jackie is walking an emotional tight rope through pretty much the whole picture, and while she is inherently sympathetic, what makes the performance shine is the layers she brings to it. Jackie is flawed, wracked by internal conflict, unsure where to vent her anger and to channel her energies, and as a result she is erratic, but also too disciplined to ever go over the top.

That conflict between appearances and her true self is at the heart of the Jackie Kennedy story. The film does a good job of setting this up early in flashback sequences around the first lady's famed 1962 televised tour of the White House. She is jittery, a smart woman feeling obligated to play the dumbed down, and extremely deferential trophy wife. You can sense her internal self humiliation in these scenes, and this makes the forceful, assertive Jackie who emerges in the aftermath of her husbands death all the more compelling.

There is a good supporting cast here as well, with Peter Sargaard fitting as Robert Kennedy, the aforementioned Billy Crudup, and John Hurt as Jaqueline's priest confessor. Beth Grant and John Carroll Lynch are the Johnson's, and an actress I'm beginning to take note of, Greta Gerwig, is quite good as Jackie's friend and white house social secretary Nancy Tuckerman. Caspar Phillipson plays Jack, and while he has very few lines, he looks more creepily like the late president then anyone I've ever seen before. This in the end is not the kind of film one typically needs to see on the big screen for full visual effect, but I would still recommend doing so, given the nature of the story it just seems right to see it large. ****