Jackie (2016)

IMDb plot summary: Following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy fights through grief and trauma to regain her faith, console her children, and define her husband's historic legacy.
Directed by Pablo Larraín. Starring Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Greta Gerwig, and Billy Crudup.

This film comes two years after what I like to call The Year of “Difficult Men and the Women Who Loved Them” Movies. Five of the eight movies nominated for Best Picture that year fell in this category, and a sixth escaped the label only because the difficult man didn’t get a woman. Anyway, that to say I am VERY TIRED of this formula, which is probably why I avoided this movie the first time around because I felt like it would inevitably end up being *about* John F. Kennedy despite pretending to be about Jackie. To my surprise, that was not the case. It’s definitely her story. The decision for him to not even be in the movie in flashbacks until the end was genius, as it really lets us focus on her experience. And when she speaks about him, it’s often in disagreement with other people also discuss him, and since we never see him himself to confirm or deny her assessment, it makes it so much more about her reaction than about who he was. Natalie Portman is excellent here, of course. She is a master of subtle acting, particularly in her facial expressions, which means she’s so good at portraying characters who are acting one way but feel another -- something Jackie constantly must deal with as a woman going through a tragedy in the public eye. The film didn’t blow me away, but it is a good one, and best of all, it feels like a *film* instead of a solemn chronicling of events the way many biopics are.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Jackie > Lazer Team
Jackie < The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
Jackie > The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Jackie < Anna Karenina
Jackie < Zoolander
Jackie > The Wedding Singer
Jackie < 35 Up
Jackie < The Sound of Music
Jackie < Junebug
Jackie > The Hidden Fortress
Jackie > The Horse's Mouth
Jackie < The Bad Sleep Well
Final spot: #1092 out of 3051.