Jackie: Slow but compelling

Cast:   Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Greta Gerwig

Rated: 8/10

Miles away from America and its 1960s, India still knows the John F Kennedy assassination tale by heart. So does America. Or so both nations and their gentries thought, till Jackie came along to press their imagination on what might have happened behind the scenes four days into the assassination of the most youthful and handsome President of America.

Straightaway, full marks to Natalie Portman who plays the agonised and terrorised but determined and poised Mrs Kennedy all through the aftermath of her husband being killed. Straightaway, full marks to director Pablo Larrain for making such a compelling docu-drama, that too coming all the way from Chili if you don’t mind and not being great with English language!

Jackie is his version of what might have happened in the White House in those four days, an imaginary version if one must point out. The in-fights, the tensions, the issues of world leaders descending with security scares, the undercurrents of a has-been First Lady and the uncertainties of life after a new President is sworn in next to her assassinated husband’s coffin.

Really, Portman lends life to this film almost entirely if, that is, you chose to ignore the brilliant work that has gone into screen-writing and costuming this uncomfortably happening slice of history hidden away from all eyes, thanks to the fierce privacy desire of the woman in the centre of it all — Jackie Kennedy.

Portman so convincingly lives and displays Jackie’s agony of those four days that you get inexorably drawn into the proceedings even when they are sometimes slow to unfold and somewhat staccato in display.

Deserves that Oscar it has been nominated for. 

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 26 February, 2017