By Marc S. Sanders
Oliver Stone’s JFK is told through perspective, not necessarily history. It’s not a biography and I do not believe Stone would ever claim it to be so. It’s a thinking person’s picture that gives viewers entitlement to question what occurred, how it occurred and why it occurred. It might guide you not to trust what anyone says, sees or hears, but let’s face it. Probably the day Kennedy was shot, November 22, 1963, could we ever completely trust anyone ever again?
(Forgive my cynicism. I must backtrack a little. I still trust my wife and daughter.)
Oliver Stone works through the eyes of New Orleans Prosecutor Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner, in what may have been his most challenging role to date at the time). Garrison sees a little too easily that there are circumstances out of place, or maybe too neatly in place to satisfy the ultimate resolution that a known American defector to the Soviet Union, like Lee Harvey Oswald (Gary Oldman), acted alone in the assassination of the President. Stone wrote the script for JFK with Jim Marrs and used Garrison’s input from his own novel. Nearly every scene builds into another possibility of how that fateful day came to be. Stone even questions if a famous photo of Oswald on the cover of Life Magazine is real. Too many cover ups with a building list of body count witnesses and too many coincidences keep Garrison up at night. So, he assembles a crack team of investigators and fellow attorneys to reopen the case and question the official Earl Warren Commission.
Firstly, JFK is magnificent entertainment with a hair raising and unusual original score from famed film composer John Williams. His notes on percussion with dings and harpsichord strings cue in at just the right moments when Stone introduces another one of many scenes that point out what seems cagy and suspect. The music of JFK works as a narrator. This narrative keeps you alert. Maybe you should look in each corner of the screen at times for some subtle clues.
It was also wise of Stone to go with a well-known cast of actors. The Oscar winning editing from Joe Hutshing and Pietro Scalia moves at a breakneck pace. Yet, because I recognize fine performers like Ed Asner, Jack Lemmon, Kevin Bacon, Tommy Lee Jones, Brian Doyle-Murray (Bill’s brother), John Candy and Joe Pesci it is easy to piece together who is playing who and what significance they lend to the many theories Garrison and Stone question next.
My admiration for the casting continues with the Garrison team that performs with Costner – Michael Rooker, Laurie Metcalf (especially impressive), Wayne Knight, and Jay O. Sanders. There’s also a clandestine trench coat guy named X portrayed by Donald Sutherland. Who even knows if this guy ever existed? He’s more secretive than Deep Throat, but Mr. X has a hell of a lot of information to justify Jim Garrison’s suspicions. That is an especially marvelous sequence between two men strolling through Washington D.C., eventually concluding a disturbing realization on a park bench.
Sissy Spacek brings out another dimension to the Jim Garrison character. She’s his wife and the mother of five who suffers the loss of her husband’s attention which is entirely focused on this compounding investigation. I like Costner’s take on the Garrison character. Early on he politely asks one of his associates to stop cursing. He does not like that kind of talk. Later, it is Garrison who is dropping a number of eff bombs in front of his wife and young children. This conundrum of a case, a very puzzling detective story, is unraveling the investigator.
JFK was instrumental for further Congressional consideration following its release. Files were reopened. Additional research was executed, and soon many of those secret documents pertaining to the assassination will be revealed in 2029. Back in 1991, of course that appeared to be a lifetime away. It’s time we know everything, though. Arguably, most of who were involved in this incident are dead by now. Let us know our history. Still, Garrison was bold enough to point skepticism at not just the adversarial relationship Kennedy may have had with Castro, the Cubans and their Communist allies, but also the people within the CIA and the FBI. Lyndon Johnson is not even free from scrutiny after he’s sworn in. Some on Garrison’s team went so far as to factor in culpability from the mafia. Garrison was not so keen on that theory, actually.
The construction of Oliver Stone’s film is unparalleled. I think it’s his best film to date and I can find few others that even compare to how he assembled the picture. It begins with the voiceover of Martin Sheen laying out many news cycles that were occurring ahead of Kennedy’s murder such as the Bay Of Pigs and the President’s supposed efforts to withdraw from Vietnam. Sheen’s narrative comes at you very fast with Stone incorporating real life home movies of Kennedy along with his brother Bobby, as well as Castro, and television news footage from Vietnam and anywhere else events were happening. By the end of the roughly five-minute opening, your head might be spinning.
Thereafter, though, Stone goes through Garrison’s day on November 22, 1963, watching the outcome following the momentous event and the writer/director works his way into the drama beginning with Asner and Lemmon as two drunk old guys walking through the rain and getting into an argument.
Three years pass by and so begins Jim Garrison’s motivations to follow multiple trails of breadcrumbs that lead to a lot of different places, all unlike what Earl Warren surmised.
The scenes work quickly from that point on, and cuts of theoretical reenactments occur. Who knows if any of these scenes are factual? Stone and Garrison want you to at least consider their reasonable likelihood. Moments happen where Joe Pesci and Tommy Lee Jones’ characters appear to be lying about even knowing one another while Stone will depict a sexual role play encounter between them which also includes Kevin Bacon as someone with no more reason to lie.
Episodes are deeply focused on Lee Harvey Oswald depicted as an infamous and suspected patsy in association with others who may have a reason to want Kennedy dead. Gary Oldman hides so well in the role. Oliver Stone even lends focus to how different witnesses describe Oswald. In some scenes it is Oldman, but then there are other times where a shorter, more overweight man may have been the real Oswald. Later, there’s an Oswald who is taller and more slender.
A few years ago, I was visiting Dallas, and I was able to spend a some time walking around the crossroads where Kennedy was shot in the convertible while seated next to his wife Jackie. Watching JFK again lent more clarity to all of the locales such as where Oswald was supposedly shooting from the top floor of the corner book depository. Kevin Costner and Jay O. Sanders go through the motions of Oswald firing the three shots from his rifle in the short amount of time span. The script also questions why Kennedy was taken out by Oswald after the turn off the corner of Elm and Houston. There appears to be a better wide-open clear shot long before the turn with the car only going ten miles per hour. The men question if it was Oswald, then why didn’t he take advantage of the clearer shot.
I know. I could go on and on. I have to stop myself. There’s a ton – A TON – of information in JFK. It becomes addicting to watch. You don’t even want to pause the long film for a bathroom break. I watched the extended Director’s Cut by the way.
Many common critiques of JFK lean towards how many of these scenes did not even happen. People are happy to point out there’s no evidence to truly say any of Oliver Stone’s enactments occurred. I agree, but that’s not the point of this director’s piece. This is primarily told through the eyes of Jim Garrison. Kevin Costner is great as the listener, the observer and especially at the conclusion, the describer. Watch him physically respond to anyone he shares a scene with. There’s a memorable twitch he offers while at the scene of the assassination that works perfectly with a jarring echo of a gunshot edited into the film. He’s also great at turning his head down as the thinker while Mr. X lays out an enormous amount of information that comes from several different directions. Because the film comes from Garrison’s perspective, it does not have to be true. It only has to be what the investigating prosecutor reasonably believes, and what he absorbs from suspects, witnesses, and his devoted team.
A final speech of Garrison’s is told at the trial of suspect Clay Bertram, aka Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones), who was the only man tried by Garrison for Kennedy’s murder. First, it’s important to note that during this fifteen-minute sequence, when Stone cuts back to Garrison in the courtroom, Costner is wearing different suits. So, while it is assembled as an ongoing rundown, it is not meant to all be in one instance. Garrison lays claim to an endless amount of possibilities and circumstances that at times have no correlation with each other but could possibly all merge together towards November 22, 1963. Critics argued this speech of Garrison’s never took place. That’s correct. However, this is a movie and for the efficiency of information to come out, a funnel must be opened up to learn what is being pursued and what has been uncovered. This is the strategy that the script for JFK adopts and it works, leaving you thinking and rightfully doubting what our governing bodies and history books have told us. Most famous of all of these nonsensical happenings delivered by Garrison is the “Magic Bullet Theory” made extra famous by Jerry Seinfeld with Wayne Knight on the comedian’s sitcom. It’s silly but it is also a response to the impact that came from JFK.
JFK has a very glossy appearance from the Oscar winning cinematography. Reflections and natural glares come off of Jim Garrison’s glasses. The exasperation, along with the shiny persperation of John Candy’s sleazy lawyer character is undeniably noticed as his integrity is being questioned. Staged reenactments are shown in black and white, clear color or grainy distressed output (such as recreations of the known Zapruder Film). Nothing is clear about what led to Kennedy’s murder. So, Oliver Stone’s filmmaking team will ensure that nothing should look consistent. There are no straight answers; only endless amounts of reasons to ask another question after another.
Oliver Stone does not make JFK as complex as some will have you believe. It’s quite easy to piece together who represents what in this story. Many theories are offered at lightning speed, but they hardly ever intersect with each other until a probability is completely laid out on the table and then the film moves on to the next one.
JFK may have a long running time and a large cast with a lot to say and ask, but it’s an exhilarating thrill to behold. Who knows what is true? The importance of Oliver Stone’s masterpiece demonstrates that much of what we were told as truth may not consist of the entirety of facts.
Again, question your governing bodies and ask the hows and whys and whos. Oliver Stone reminds us that we have that right as the citizens of America.
What really happened to our President, and who was really responsible?
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 