Is there a form of narrative cinema more tiresomely middlebrow than the December biopic of a celebrated figure, particularly when it is centered on a showy act of impersonation that is inevitably mistaken for superlative acting? One could be forgiven for assuming that Jackie, Chilean director Pablo Larrain’s portrait of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, would fall into this category. It does, after all, feature Natalie Portman in a highly mannered performance, full of breathy exclamations and quietly harsh pronouncements. It turns out, however, that Portman’s portrayal is a perfect match for Larrain’s striking film, which is veritably obsessed with appearance, performance, and the subtleties of mythmaking.
Jackie doesn’t toss out the biopic form entirely in the manner of Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There, but it’s unconventional enough to make one snap to attention, beginning with the first, unsettling notes of Mica Levi’s phenomenally peculiar score. Larrain and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim limit the film almost entirely to a week in Kennedy’s life, corresponding to her husband’s assassination and its aftermath. Framed by an exclusive interview that the already-hardened widow gives to a journalist (Billy Cudrup), the film gracefully weaves together moments both iconic and prosaic.
Jackie is foremost a film about mourning and, in particular, about the way that the electronic age—at its dawn in 1963—demands that a narrative be established days or even hours after a public figure’s death. Although the “real Jackie” remains calculatingly concealed in Larrain’s portraiture, Portman and the film’s outstanding crew forcefully convey the first lady’s role in etching the myth of Camelot, as well as the unfathomable burden of suppressing her private grief, even as she stage-managed her husband’s legacy. It’s biopic done right, in which celebrity mimicry and splendid visuals are not ends, but a means to explore multifaceted truths about history.
Jackie opens at the Landmark Plaza Frontenac Cinema on Wednesday, December 21.
