Jackie Kennedy biopic (with Natalie Portman) thread

Saw this today, it's pretty darn great. The colors, the fog, the sunset, the kids, the anxious shots of trauma and sorrow. I don't like the type of acting Portman does, but I took it in stride. There are so many great shots, and the score is perfect. Also, it plays great with Larrain's earlier films, like a true auteur.

Love fgti's description of the score, and I'm kinda thinking that one of the biggest strengths of Larrain is his willingness to work with partners. Alfredo Castro both co-wrote Tony Manero and played the main character perfectly; and Sergio Armstrong owns a lot of the greatness of their collaborations. It gives his films more layers, makes the whole thing more interesting, though in a way that is probably failed by auterist theory.

It's a bit too funny or something?

Fred B in a nutshell

I had little patience for it.

The score's great but almost too inapposite, like most anything Johnny Greenwood does.

what else has Mica Levi done?

under the skin

i do not understand what this movie was trying to do. the score is great but intrusive as reported upthread. rest of it felt very disembodied, very reliant on clunky expository dialogue, full of pretty shots that were also curiously empty compositions, overall felt like "gus van sant's jackie kennedy project" in style and pacing. portman speaks as if her voice is melting/decomposing which i understand is how jackie o spoke but having it embodied in someone whose normal voice i am so familiar with...well it took a lot of adjusting to. my favorite scene is "natalie portman grieves and puts on 3-4 dresses in a row"

her hair is great too

I keep thinking this says "Jamie Kennedy biopic (with Natalie Portman)." I'd see that movie.

I'm not sure the film was 'trying to do' that much. Felt very improvisational/collaborational/experimental to me. It's an examination of the way Jackie Kennedy created the myth of the 'great' John & Camelot & all that, but scene for scene it's mostly impressionistic. I've been thinking how it compares to Post Mortem and No, btw, and the whole 'oeuvre' becomes more and more interesting to me.

I appreciated the try, but it's a failed experiment. The movie still accepts Jackie's hagiographic account.

Felt very improvisational/collaborational/experimental to me

yeah imo this really didn't work

it's impressionistic in its rhythms and its images but not in its text at all

my screener forgot to include a barf bag for use whenever the Camelot theme plays

w/

my favorite scene is "natalie portman grieves and puts on 3-4 dresses in a row"

followed by "Natalie Portman lights sixth cigarette in 90 seconds."

R Burton singing? xp

this sounds like soooooooooome 'experimental' film

R Burton singing? xp

― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius),

No – Thom Yorke, backed by Jonny Greenwood, David Gray, Suede's Bernard Butler, and Roxy Music's Andy Mackay.

oh god, the horror

j/k

it was burton

wasn't impressed by this at all -- clunky script, boring idea, mostly bad acting. natalie was OK and the actor who played JFK was fine in the 1-2 minutes he was onscreen. cringed at a lot of the dialogue. perhaps this wasn't what the film set out to do but i was struck by how empty the actual content of the film was, completely free of any insights into the kennedy administration beyond what you'd get from a vanity fair cover story. there was nothing remotely RFK-ish about the way peter sarsgaard played RFK -- if she hadn't kept calling him "bobby," i probably wouldn't have even figured out who he was right away.

one of Larrain's tropes is how media figures create their own reality (re: No, Neruda, possibly The Club). My problem with Jackie is that in the squid ink cloud of its framing and anachronistic post-modern script it advances an idea of Jackie K and the Kennedys that I find risible. I don't give a fuck about this savvy airhead, her clever airhead president-husband, and his aborted presidency.

The guy who played JFK was Danish! And while he wasn't impressive, aside from his lookalike qualities, I liked how little he was in the film, and how he always seemed to enter the image unexpectedly. Like a ghost, see?

I'm curious to see what idea you think the film made about the JFK administration, Alfred. I really don't think the film accepts the hagiography, even the scenes where JFK is alive seems to depict a mostly dull and shallow reality - and in the shot of Jackie getting off the plane in Dalles she seems almost on the verge of an anxiety attack. When Bobby dissects it he also complains that they didn't get to do anything - and manages to sound like a moron when he complains LBJ will get all the glory from Vietnam. I think Larrain mostly sees the work of creating history as being hellish and awful - there's a scene in Post Mortem of the two main characters a couple days before the coup, sitting quietly, neither of them with any opinion on what's happening, and then both of them breaking down in tears, as if they're so sad that something has to happen, and won't leave them alone - and yeah, films like No and Jackie says that it's mostly all myths anyway.

I'm also really curious as to what JD and Brad means by terms such as 'content' and 'text'. The film is mostly its aesthetic, that is by far the most important part of it. There's not some underlying layer which is the real film.

But admittedly a big part of my love for the film has more to do with the incredible light, colors, sunset and fog that is in it. As it is with most films.

sorry i was using "content" a bit lazily -- i really just meant that there was basically nothing about the actual kennedy administration in this film, to the point that i think ppl with no prior knowledge would come away knowing basically nothing except that JFK died and everyone was sad.

that RFK speech was so ludicrous, sounded more like an atlantic writer's take on JFK's legacy than a grieving brother's.

The lighting accentuates the reconstruction of a fictive past. It's the best element.

my favorite scene is "natalie portman grieves and puts on 3-4 dresses in a row"

followed by "Natalie Portman lights sixth cigarette in 90 seconds."

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, January 11, 2017 4:56 PM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my dream life

do we get to see JFK's head explode like a pumpkin?

The lighting accentuates the reconstruction of a fictive past. It's the best element.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), 11. januar 2017 23:41 (thirteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

At times it has exactly the same colors as in this old book from the sixties about JFK that my grandparents had, that I used to sift through. It's a lot like the use of Sony U-matic in No.

The list, btw, because lists are awesome:

1) El Club
2) Jackie
3) Post Mortem
4) No
5) Tony Manero

And Neruda will play here in the summer, and I should watch Fuga at some point.

(also, no, there is next to nothing on the JFK administration, but tbf Jackie wasn't part of the administration, so that's kinda hard to blame the film for in my view)

The guy who played JFK was Danish!

I thought you mean Peter Sarsgaard, he's got to be Danish somewhere down the line.

Wiki says two paternal great-great-grandparents. It's not a Danish surname, though, so I would have guessed Sweden.

ay freddy b tony manero is no way 5th on the list jesus

also fuga apparently is crap

ach, really wasn't that keen on Neruda at all. the whole meta thing fell a bit flat for me, and the chase aspect of it was without any sort of jeopardy or urgency to make it seem remotely compelling

chilean press prosaically and provincially annoyed at the depiction of neruda

I should never see a film on a Friday night--may have nodded off for about 10 minutes early on. I'd like to watch it again at home a few months from now. I found the conception of Jackie Kennedy as really caustic and embittered--things like her line about de Gaulle on a tank--but drifting in and out of her prescribed and more proper role intriguing, and some of the visuals were nice.

Neruda's the better film, but not by much. Weirdly minor.

One of the weirdest things in Jackie: early on--maybe it's the first time she speaks in the recreation of the White House Tour interview--it's hard not to notice how much she sounds like Marilyn Monroe, and right then you hear her say something about the Monroe Room.

not sure where else to post this

saw Larrain’s Tony Manero yesterday. I thought it was just going to be a dark comedy about a man with a John Travolta / Saturday Night Fever obsession.

I guess you could call it a black comedy but it turned out to be barbarous and unsettling, with a memorable final scene

Post Mortem was also interesting. It was apparently filmed in a 2.66:1 aspect ratio using Lomo lenses on 16mm film, and had beautiful subdued colors

didn't love this quite as much, but the final scene was as memorable as the one in Tony Manero

No is a little more conventional as a film than Tony Manero or Post Mortem

I’m really impressed by Alfredo Castro after seeing three films featuring him now

Castro is very good! Check out From Afar as well, it has gorgeous cinematography by Sergio Armstrong (Larrain's usual photographer) and a great part for Castro.

No was the first I saw of Larrain, and I kind of dismissed him as a crafty stylist. Then I saw El Club and loved it. No still seems funny, feel good and slight tome, but I like it a bit more, since it really is funny. It also helps that it's a bit removed from the hype of 'this TRUE STORY shows the power of advertising!' which but me off at the time. Now it seems more in line with Larrain's interest in storytelling and how it shapes our lives.

I’ve been continuing to watch his films. I just saw El Club. Like Tony Manero and Post Mortem it is solemn but also incredibly savage and strange. It also has beautiful photography, with back-lit washed-out images

will watch From Afar

A story about institutionalization of denial. The pious moral compromise of the final scene in El Club is another subtly shocking ending for Larrain, it seems like a signature for him

haven't rewatched Jackie yet, but Neruda seems so much more watered down and conventional than his earlier films

Nooooo! It has one of my best new filmic ideas, the way that scenes are cut between so many locations, and in the beginning you don't really notice it, because films sometimes do that, but then in the climactic conversation Gael Garcia Bernal all of a sudden notices that he is moving between between places every cut! Because the past is an unstable construction! I love Neruda, kinda thinks it's his magnum opus.

i didn't really enjoy neruda that much either. i think either tony manero or no are my favourite of larrain's films.

no feels extra relevant this week obviously

will have to see Neruda again

Jackie seems better to me than it did the first time I saw it

didn't notice that aspect of Neruda tbh

Tony Manero, Post Mortem, El Club were so good

Jackie gives a sense of how constantly Jackie Kennedy was watched

Ema is v good

No special interest in the subject, but I liked Jackie, like Kristen Stewart (or at least did, until seeing she doesn't count Adventureland as one of her five good films--clueless!), and like the poster, so I went to see Spencer. I may see it again, eventually--I was tired, so I drifted off for possibly 15-20 minutes.

Very hush-hush and morose. I wish they'd had a bit more of the Diana you see with her sons, but the director wants you to know how miserable her life was, so I guess he didn't want to undermine that. Sally Hawkins has a great scene that will get her lots of year-end recognition and awards. Unusual score--jazz concrete, or something. An accomplishment of sorts: it's all so gloomy, when Mike & the Mechanics barrel in after two hours they practically sound like the Sex Pistols.

the score is so good

i thought this was all around better than jackie but could’ve lost twenty minutes

Maybe I got lucky and those were the 20 minutes I slept through.

Looked back at my Jackie post four years ago: "may have nodded off for about 10 minutes early on." I'm taking longer naps now.

Larrain should make more flicks like Ema.