‘Jackie’ a fractured Kennedy fable – Intricate performance from fully committed Portman

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History, lately run amok, is ordered with such tidy, forceful finesse by Natalie Portman’s Jacqueline Kennedy in in the piercing “Jackie.” Summoning a journalist to Hyannis Port in 1963, not long after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, she coolly sets the record for her late husband’s legacy, coining “Camelot” and shaping the mythology. Some details that don’t fit the narrative she simply crosses out. “I don’t smoke,” she tells the Life magazine reporter (Billy Crudup), with a cigarette dangling between her fingers.

Pablo Larrain’s “Jackie,” a work of probing intimacy and shattered stereotype, is an electrifyingly fractured portrait of the former first lady. Gone is the image of the wan, serene Jackie. Here, instead, is a savvy public-relations operator, a steely widow in grief and a woman redefining herself amid tragedy. “I’m his wi—” she begins saying after Dallas. “Whatever I am now.”

The more complicated view of the mysterious Kennedy is inspired partly by the revelatory private interviews conducted by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr and released in 2011. She was not purely her pillbox-wearing public image, not merely a totem of grace, the candid tapes revealed.

Throughout “Jackie,” we feel her discomfort at playing a starring role in an American fairy tale turned nightmare. The disharmony, sounded by Mica Levi’s knotted, gloomy score, is always there between persona and person. “We’re the beautiful people, right?” she sarcastically quips. Exiting Air Force One, she deadpans to her husband (Caspar Phillipson), “I love crowds.” In Larrain’s hands, Kennedy’s pained public performance is a kind of sacrifice. “Jackie” is at once a deconstruction of the Jackie Kennedy fable and a dramatization of its making.

Penned by Noah Oppenheim (“The Maze Runner”), “Jackie” evades the traditional biopic format like a disease. It’s organized around the Hyannis Port interview with flashbacks to events large and small before the assassination, during it and after. Many of the scenes, quiet and empty, are shot less like flashbacks than like Kennedy’s own splintered, haunted memories.

Some, like her televised White House tour (recreated with black-and-white precision), are familiar. Others are strikingly surreal. Kennedy silently marching through a vacant White House, her pink suit bloodied from the shooting, is an unshakable image that feels straight out of Kubrick.

And then there’s Kennedy stomping through rainy Arlington, her heels digging into the wet ground. Seeking a spot for what will be the Eternal Flame, she is, through force of will, staking a plot in history for her husband. “Have you read what they’ve been writing?” she first greets the reporter. “It’s no way to be remembered.”

Portman’s Kennedy is, from the start, probably thornier and more uneasy than the woman ever was. Portman and Larrain have sharpened her and superimposed her story on a rigorously crafted but resolutely cold surface. “Jackie,” though endlessly fascinating, can feel like a character study conducted on a surgical table.

Larrain, the talented Chilean filmmaker of the Oscar-nominated “No” whose equally complex “Neruda” is also out soon, is interested in dissecting Kennedy but not solving her. “I’ll settle for a story that’s believable,” says Crudup’s reporter. The truth, Kennedy says, is out of reach.

What is within the grasp of “Jackie” — aside from a compelling, intricate performance from a fully committed Portman — is a sense of how difficult it may have been for Kennedy to make things look so easy. With preternatural poise, she served as a bulwark of decorum and order against the chaos of the times. It’s chilling now to hear the advice of Kennedy family friend William Walton (the great Richard E. Grant) after Lee Harvey Oswald is gunned down. He tells Kennedy to take the kids to Boston and “build a fortress.” ‘’The world’s gone mad, Mrs. Kennedy.”

Natalie Portman and Michelle Williams sat down for a chat for Variety’s “Actors on Actors.” For more, tune into “Actors on Actors” when it debuts on PBS SoCal on Jan. 3.

Natalie Portman: What made you want to do “Manchester by the Sea”?

Michelle Williams: I always wanted to work with Kenny Lonergan after seeing “You Can Count on Me,” and after seeing his plays. He had asked me to read a play of his once, and I was very pregnant and said no because I was so nervous about being bad. I’ve just held it in the back of my head as a little fantasy: Maybe one day I’ll work with Kenny Lonergan. He has this gift for making things feel natural and normal, like there’s nothing happening. But then in the end something transcendent has just occurred. How did you get the courage to say yes to “Jackie”?

Portman: It seemed kind of crazy to do, because I’m not really an impersonator. And to have to play someone so well-known was really scary. Darren Aronofsky had the property, and then he decided not to direct it. Then he called me last year and said that he had seen Pablo Larrain’s film “The Club” at the Berlin Film Festival where he was on the jury, and he was like, “I think this is the guy.”

Williams: You’d have to be some crazy person to be really enthusiastic about jumping off a cliff of your abilities.

Portman: Well, you know, you did Marilyn Monroe.

Williams: But how did you do that accent? You’re shooting in Paris and doing Jackie’s accent — those must have been two really strange worlds. Having listened to Jackie, that was like a voice meld — the two of you.

Portman: Thank you. People definitely accuse me of doing it by accident all the time. Because you unconsciously start doing the voice. It’s fun! I’m sure you’ve had that with Marilyn, too — the breathiness.

Williams: I just remember one day on set being all Marilyn-ed out and seeing people look at me. I’m very much a shrink-and-hide kind of person, and I just had a moment of like, “Well, this could be fun!”

Portman: You started really young also. How do you feel that changed the way you are now as an actor? When did you know that you wanted to really do this for your life?

Williams: How old were you when you started?

Portman: Eleven.

Williams: I was around the same age. It’s a funny thing, you know? It turned out all right. But it isn’t a life that I would want necessarily. It was really hard when I started out, and the bottom of absolutely every barrel. My first agent was a part-time undertaker.

Portman: No! That’s a really good pair of professions to match.

Williams: It worked out OK. It’s a really long way, and not necessarily a very nice one. It’s a hard childhood to have — or a lack of a childhood to have. I do love doing it, and I can’t really imagine doing anything else.

Portman: Yes, and we end up doing that a lot, too — more than men — because so many female parts are moms. I feel like I always work with a kid.

Williams: I know. And I feel an extra protectiveness and also a desire to be like, “So, do you have any other interests?”

Portman: Someone was saying recently: Think about what you love when you’re 11. Adults who are feeling lost, try and regain that. And it’s funny that they pinpointed that age, because you say you started then. That’s when I started. I feel that there is something around that time where you do have an instinct about what you really love. (Agencies)

Williams: Do you think that motivated you to direct?

Portman: Probably. Especially with what I chose to direct — it was so serious. I think it’s definitely motivated me to try other things, because I do find myself more fulfilled when I feel like I’m learning something from what I’m doing and pushing myself to new places. Have you ever thought about directing?

Williams: I can barely even put together a sentence, let alone a movie. (Agencies)

By Jake Coyle

 

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