Jackie (2016) ★★★★½ Quote:
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An account of the days of First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, in the immediate aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963.
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This is a film in which Natalie Portman gives a performance for the ages. She is not someone just playing a role, but playing a role in which she is also playing multiple different roles, with Jackie being a multifaceted character – present and past – and rarely showing her true self to us.
The cinematography, make-up, costuming and production design are exquisite and I'm amazed it didn't do better at the Oscars and other industry awards that year.
I saw this at the cinema when it was first released and thought it was a mesmerising film with the tense relationship between Portman's Jackie Kennedy and Billy Crudup's unnamed journalist at the centre of the film. I was also fascinated by Jackie's relationship with her brother-in-law, Bobby (Peter Sarsgaard) and the way she struggled with her faith, something brought out with warmth in the interactions with a priest (John Hurt).
The film makes clear that Jackie Kennedy wasn't a one-dimensional character, but the First Lady, a grieving wife, grieving mother, and someone resigned to knowing her spouse was not faithful, but also worrying about what will be written about them in the history books. It's to Natalie Portman's credit that she is able to portray all these facets with equal conviction and make them completely convincing.