Capone's Art-House Round-Up with JACKIE and KATE PLAYS CHRISTINE!!!

Hey, folks. Capone in Chicago here, with a few films that are making their way into art houses or coming out in limited release around America this week (maybe even taking up one whole screen at a multiplex near you). Do your part to support these films, or at least the good ones…


JACKIE
First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy existed in a nearly impossible situation even before her husband was assassinated in November 1963. She was a fairly private person who believed that the White House belonged to all Americans, and so she brought television cameras into the presidential home in early 1962 and acted as a well-rehearsed but uneasy tour guide for the American people in a way that had never been done before. This landmark bit of theater serves as one of many telling story threads in director Pablo Larrain’s JACKIE, which hopes to give us some insight into Mrs. Kennedy’s life in the days and weeks surrounding the murder of John F. Kennedy, a man who was a constant source of frustration to his wife even after his death.

As you might expect from the Chilean-born director, Larrain (NERUDA, NO) did not grow up with Jackie Kennedy as a real presence in his life, so the film is, in a way, his means of figuring out why millions were so fascinated by her until her death. What brand of mystique did Jackie possess that other famous figures did not? Her story is told largely in flashback, as Mrs. Kennedy (played with a combination of allure and raw pain by Natalie Portman) allows herself to be interviewed by an unnamed journalist (Billy Crudup) a week after the state funeral of her husband. And it’s clear as they speak that the conversation is as much a chance for her to vent her emotions as it is a place to gather facts. She makes it quite clear that she’ll have the final say in what is on and off the record.

Jackie’s pain is all the more elevated by never having had a chance to confront Kennedy about his numerous affairs, or at least smooth things over with him about how she could be a better wife. Although the film is cut together in a decidedly non-linear fashion, Larrain never allows us to get lost in the many storylines, especially when it comes down to where we are in relation to the assassination. Large portions of the film, especially from the death of JFK into the immediate aftermath feels like a horror show of screaming, crying, blood and chaos. The filmmaker saves the blow-by-blow re-creation of the killing until near the end of the film, as Jackie describes it to the reporter, and it’s as bad as you can imagine. But this time around, it’s placed in the context of their life at that exact moment, and we’re keenly aware of the state of their marriage and how close or distant they were feeling at that exact moment.

Of course none of that matters once the bullets start flying, and despite their differences on that day, her overwhelming shock and grief were as real as they come. The scenes set in the aftermath of Kennedy’s death are almost like a wartime documentary where members of the administration as well as newly sworn in president Lyndon Johnson (John Carroll Lynch) are swarming around Jackie trying to plan a funeral while she is in the early stages of PTSD, still covered in her husband’s blood as she must think about her future, planning the funeral, and finding a place for her and her children to live with no notice. She works with everyone from her assistant Nancy (Greta Gerwig) to her priest (John Hurt) to artist/family confidante William Walton (Richard E. Grant) to brother-in-law Bobby Kennedy (Peter Sarsgaard) to figure out both her world moving forward and the late president’s legacy.

Through the course of JACKIE, Larrain slowly pieces together both a series of events and a revealing psychological profile of a person under the most amount of stress imaginable. By the end, we realize that the filmmaker is most impressed by Mrs. Kennedy’s strength and courage, as well as her fierce loyalty to man who could never be entirely loyal to her.

Together with the almost other-worldly camerawork by Stéphane Fontaine (who also shot the current release ELLE) and mournful score by Mica Levi (whose work on UNDER THE SKIN still gives me chills), Larrain and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim give us a fully realized Jackie Kennedy—protective, angry, grieving, caring, spiritual, personal, and aloof. She’s a walking contradiction that still makes sense and maintains an air of mystery while also being transparent. You just have to see it for yourself, which I highly suggest you do, since JACKIE is one of the finest films of the year.


KATE PLAYS CHRISTINE
Just a few weeks ago, we were fortunate enough to get the brief release of director Antonio Campos film CHRISTINE, about Florida newscaster Christine Chubbuck, who killed herself on the air in 1974 and served in no small part as an inspiration for the lead character in the film Network. Although not meant as a companion piece, the other film about Chubbuck, KATE PLAYS CHRISTINE, from documentary filmmaker Robert Greene (FAKE IT SO REAL, ACTRESS) serves as a perfect part two of a double feature by taking a decidedly different approach to Chubbuck’s life and death that has almost more of an unfiltered emotional impact than Christine.

Working primarily as a walk though Chubbuck’s life through the eyes of indie film actress Kate Lyn Sheil (SILVER BULLETS, “House of Cards”), who is on location in Sarasota doing research about Chubbuck to prepare for the role of acting as her in this very film. Sheil’s goal is to attempt to build a real-life character to assist her in understanding the circumstances that lead Chubbuck to commit suicide. Director Greene builds up a certain momentum as he continuously returns to Sheil and the special effects team that are preparing for the on-air suicide scene, figuring out how to make her long wig puff out just right to show the bullet passing through her skull. It’s an eerie, morbid way to approach docudrama filmmaking, but this makes it no less fascinating.

Sheil does a remarkable job letting us into her process and frustration of building the Chubbuck character, wanting do her life justice and empathizing with the newswoman’s frustration with her network’s decision to push blood-and-guts TV rather than promote local stories that actually impact their viewership. The actress narrates each new discovery in her investigative journey, from people who knew and worked with Chubbuck, to buying a gun at the same store where she did. Sheil’s priority is to locate footage of Chubbuck, which she does in one of them most impactful sequences of the movie.

Although we see certain scenes being shot for Sheil’s film about Chubbuck, I don’t get the impression that a final film actually exists. The documentary seems to be the end goal here, and even portions of that are obscured with sequences that are obviously staged in an attempt to blur the lines between Chubbuck’s depression and Sheil’s own quandaries about the character and how deeply she feels for Chubbuck once she does. Each new reenactment becomes increasing more difficult for Sheil, and it all builds to a tense and tough day of shooting the suicide, which the actress clearly does not want to do.

There is absolutely something inherently more haunting and devastating about talking to people who actually knew and appreciated Christine Chubbuck than simply reproducing her final days. It seems like she was a good and sensitive soul, and the world just wasn’t on her side, either in her personal or professional life. The film makes a case for her social shortcomings being the result of never breaking free of her mother’s overbearing affections, but I don’t think it’s that simple. 



Sheil is a strong enough actor to sell us both on her version of Chubbuck, as well as the version of herself as an artist attempt to capture the impossible—the soul of another person. She never wants us to feel sorry for her as a performer, but it’s impossible not to when we look at how she takes on a character so completely. KATE PLAYS CHRISTINE is as delicate as it is tough, and it’s a worthy glimpse into the hearts and minds of those who attempt to capture life from many different angles.

-- Steve Prokopy
"Capone"
capone@aintitcool.com
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