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Jackie
Blaine: I took my parents to see “Jackie” in December of 2016 and I learned more about who Jackie Kennedy was because I never bothered with researching her, but I know her husband John F. Kennedy well enough.
Plot (Spoiler Alert)The film shows what Jackie Kennedy is going through after the assassination of her husband, John F. Kennedy and also shows pieces of her past when she was the First Lady in the White House. 
Blaine: It was very surprising for Pablo Larrain that they wanted a Chilean person to direct a film having to do a lot with America. Pablo is more experimental with film, which is why they chose him and he made “Jackie” artistic and dramatic. Screenwriter Noah Opperheim had been wanting to write a movie about Jackie Kennedy almost all his life. His mom was a huge admirer of Jackie and Noah found a box of these old magazines that were from that week in 1963 in his mom’s old bedroom. The magazines had iconic images of Jackie in the black veil leaving the funeral and Noah was struck immediately by those photos and he was fascinated with Jackie. Noah learned as much as he could about Jackie as he got older and one of the things he realized was that there have been so many women in history and Jackie never had gotten enough credit about other things besides her fashion. Noah felt that it was time someone made a movie with her in the center of it and so he wrote the script. The scene that I am most impressed with Natalie Portman’s performance of Jackie is when she is rubbing her husband’s blood off her face after his assassination because she shows so much drama on her face while crying after what she has witnessed it right in front of her. And while watching the movie, I did feel Jackie Kennedy through Natalie’s performance, she made me believe she was Jackie Kennedy. Natalie was terrified at first to take on an iconic women like Jackie because everyone knows what she looks and sounds like and Natalie looks nothing like her and she never thought of herself as a mimic. Natalie went through footage of Jackie when she did the tour of the White House and she got what ever useful information she could get her hands on. Natalie said when you do all that research it lives inside you. Jackie’s accent was very specific, according to Natalie. Natalie thought it was smart that screenwriter Noah Oppeheim had the film focus on the days after the assassination because it gives people a microcosm of who she was as a person in this incredibly pressured situation and to see at that moment her husband is killed in her lap and how terrifying and awful it is. Jackie kept the pink outfit on that had Kennedy’s blood on it got from when he was shot and Natalie described what was on Jackie’s mind and that "I’m going to stay in this dress because my image is important right now and for people to see how serious this is”. My dad said "The main impression you get from the film is how Jackie wanted both her husband and the events to be remembered. She didn’t want any of it to be left to chance, she wanted her imprint on how it would be remembered in history.” He also said they did a good job of combining historical footage with new shots, for example scenes where the motorcade was driving through Dealey Plaza before, during and after JFK was shot. My rating on “Jackie” is five out of five stars. Many thanks to my dad for helping me with this review |