Jackie Review: Natalie Portman Earns a Nomination

Director: Pablo Larraín

Cast: Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Billy Crudup, John Hurt, Greta Gerwig, John Carroll Lynch

Rating: 15

Running Time: 100 Minutes

Release Date: 20/01/17

JACKIE is a drama about the life of Jacqueline “Jackie” Kennedy in the days immediately following the assassination of her husband, US President John F. Kennedy.

JACKIE is the definitive Oscar film. Biopic, check. Period piece, check. Career defining central performance, check.

Though there’s a propensity for big Oscar winners to be merely mediocre, the definition of an Oscar-worthy film is a contentious issue, it must be said that it’s often the lead performance that propels the film into awards season.

I feel like this Oscar season JACKIE is the film best fitting of this description. Natalie Portman is, as many have stated, incredible in the role. She sinks her teeth into it, delves into it. She captures the essence of grief and despair with incredible dexterity, never seeming too showy or too restrained.

One particular moment, as we cut from the immediate aftermath of those terrible bullets to her wiping the blood off her face in a mirror, is breathtaking. Sometimes a performance feels like its just that, a performance. Yet here, this feels like she’s tapped into the sheer gut-wrenching horror of the moment as her guttural sobs reverberate throughout the rest of the film.

This is her film, whether as she stumbles around the White House in a state of catatonia or in recreated footage of her tour. She nails the accent, she nails the posture, she nails the feeling of each and every second. Whether it’s an honourable performance of Jackie Kennedy or not, Portman inhabits it with mild-mannered ferocity.

The film just falls in around her. The direction and cinematography use different ratios and old styles to match the time period and the score from Mica Levi is a stunning, surreal mix of classical music and modern synth. There’s also a sense of history rumbling like reality has been displaced and we’re living in the wrong timeline.

The rest of the cast do a good job of filling the rest of the roles but as nearly every single scene features Portman, there’s nothing that particularly stands out.

Overall I enjoyed JACKIE. I liked its narrative complexities and the way it flitted between flashback and the present. There wasn’t much beyond the central performance but because the film rarely loses focus on Portman, that’s not much of a problem.

It’s a rich, beautifully scored and magnetisingly performed.

Verdict 

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