‘Jackie’ is rolling in her grave

Laughably off-key and relentlessly dull, “Jackie” offers a post-modern vision of Jacqueline Kennedy, in which the tall, elegant First Lady is depicted as a small, be-wigged nervous wreck.

The problem isn’t merely that Portman’s portrayal isn’t factually accurate, but that she and her director, Pablo Larrain, have no conception of the woman they’re portraying.

[...] if you want to do contortions in defense of the film, you could say that this was all intentional, that it was genius for Portman to play Jackie as though she were an older version of the woman she played in “Black Swan”; and that it was a brilliant innovation to have the actor playing Bobby Kennedy (Peter Sarsgaard) look 10 years older (and half a foot taller) than the actor playing Jack.

Or that it was right for the music score to be thunderous, intrusive and in disharmony with the action on screen.

Or that it was just great that the conversation between a journalist (Billy Crudup) and Mrs. Kennedy, in the aftermath of the assassination, is nothing like the real life dynamic between journalists and political figures.

[...] no insight can be gleaned or arrived at through a portrayal of Jackie Kennedy as having been a fragile, emotional cripple at the height of her influence and popularity.

Interview segments, in which she smokes non-stop (though this is a secret she keeps from the public), are interspersed with scenes from the White House years, scenes of the aftermath of the assassination, and, notably, a scene of the assassination itself.

There’s nothing at stake, no transformation to witness, just the weird spectacle of Portman’s peculiar Jackie impersonation and the promise, hinted at throughout, that the assassination will be shown.

(She spoke about it to a historian, but then suppressed that part of the interview.) Along with Joe DiMaggio’s refusal to talk about his marriage to Marilyn Monroe, it’s the most impressive show of restraint and good taste by a grieving celebrity in the entire second half of the 20th century.

[...] the movie depicts that moment in all its bloody horror, ostensibly in an expression of kinship and sympathy.