Oliver Stone's JFK (1991) is both an unquestionably brilliant piece of filmmaking, and an unscrupulous, irresponsible distortion of historical fact. It is on the list with Birth of a Nation, Triumph of the Will and Battleship Potemkin as a key instance of "writing history with lightning" - a brilliant representation of historical fact through a willfully skewed, propagandistic and inaccurate lens. If the worldview Stone advocated were not so repulsive - and so influential - I would not bother addressing it. But in this case, the politics cannot be separated from the film, especially given the film's extraordinary influence on public perception of the assassination (with a staggering 75% people believing in some variant of conspiracy). As a work of fiction, and one man's take on history, JFK is a borderline masterpiece. As history, it's drek - and dangerous drek at that.
Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) is the District Attorney of New Orleans who, like most Americans, is horrified by the assassination of John F. Kennedy and its chaotic aftermath. Several years later, Garrison begins an investigation into the assassination, honing in on New Orleans eccentric David Ferrie (Joe Pesci), flamboyant businessman Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones) and right-wing nut Guy Bannister (Ed Asner) - and their reported connection to assassin Lee Harvey Oswald (Gary Oldman), Oswald's assassin Jack Ruby (Brian Doyle-Murray), and officials even higher-up. Ultimately, the investigation snowballs, with the CIA, FBI, Mafia, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lyndon Johnson, American big business, the Dallas PD, the Secret Service, right-wing nutjobs, anti-Castro Cubans, and of course "military-industrial complex" all involved in Garrison's view of events. While striving for the truth, Garrison suffers estrangement from his wife (Sissy Spacek) and kids, the dissent of his colleague Bill Brauchard (Michael Rooker), the loss of witnesses, and harrassment and discrediting by the government and media - but the DA will not stop until the truth is brought to light.
It would be futile to address the film's specific inaccuracies; websites have done point-by-point debunkings of the film's claims, and they have more time and patience than I. In any event, Stone throws out information so fast that one cannot absorb it, let alone formulate a counterargument, let alone notice the various discrepancies in what's actually being said. For just one example, the portrayal of Oswald is all over the place; depending on the scene he's a CIA spook, a KGB plant, an FBI informant, an innocent patsy - or all of the above. (More amusing is a moment where Garrison and an aide test-fire a rifle, claiming it can't be fired in 5.6 seconds, only to do so in less time!) But with the film's machine gun pace, spewing out dozens of "factoids" a minute, it's impossible to digest such discrepanices; it all adds up to a palpable atmosphere of dread and paranoia, with little basis besides strident rhetoric and unanswered questions.
Through his brilliant direction, striking editing, starkly accusatory words (from ostensibly authoritative sources), and John Williams' foreboding score, Stone leaves an indelible impression of menace - that something is wrong, the conspiracy is out there and very dangerous, and that everything we are told about America is a lie. However, upon rational consideration, Stone undermines his own argument by swallowing every bit of conspiracy lore out there, from the vaguely plausible to the completely outlandish, implicating more or less everyone on Earth (except perhaps the Mafia, whose involvement Stone strangely discounts). Stone tries to argue that who the conspirators actually were is not important, but that the motive is - a fallacy, as any number of people have motive to kill any President. If you accept that a conspiracy has infinite capacity to kill the President, cover it up for decades, silence witnesses, etc., then I suppose there's no arguing with you; but I would hope most rational people would conclude that with the available evidence pointing irrevocably in the direction of Lee Harvey Oswald's guilt, only one conclusion could be drawn.
I do not mind Stone's expressing an opinion at all, as I hope my glowing review of Nixon illustrates. But that movie made it clear it was a work of speculative fiction. Passing a film based on such wild, unproven (and I would argue unprovable) speculation off as fact, however, is something else entirely - particularly when easily provable distortions are part of the argument. Whether an artist is responsible for its work's affects is a dicey issue, but with the vast majority of Americans still believing in conspiracy, Stone cannot be exonerrated either. If a similarly striking and well-made film were made about Holocaust denial - the heroic Otto Ernst Remer or Wolf Rudiger Hess fighting an all-encompassing Zionist conspiracy, perhaps - it would be condemned as vile propaganda, and rightfully so. Where is the line between entertainment and misinformation drawn?
The movie's worldview is, to my eyes at least, toxic. Jim Garrison was a crackpot with questionable scruples and probable Mob connections; his lunatic ramblings and persecution of Shaw dealt the conspiracy community a blow it took decades to recover from. Here he's an all-American, righteous, Capra-esque hero standing up against the evil Powers That Be. The film's hagiographic portrayal of John F. Kennedy as a ultra-liberal saint is dubious at best, ignoring his stance as a hardened Cold Warrior, his standoff-ish view of Civil Rights, and completely exonerrates him of responsibility for the Vietnam debacle. The CIA is yet again portrayed as an autonomous, self-governing body with its own policy (a notion further advanced in Nixon). More nauseating is the portrayal of Lee Harvey Oswald as a basically good guy caught in a conspiracy beyond his understanding. And the film's overall stance that the US government and establishment is inherently evil and destructive is most repugnant of all, fomenting distrust of the government based on lies and disinformation.
Can we leave all that aside though? Can we look at the film not as an historical document, but as a piece of entertainment? It's very difficult, but for the sake of fairness, we will try. For certainly, all its errors and dubious morality aside, the film is nothing if not engrossing and entertaining.
To focus on what the film does well, is in its conveyance of atmosphere - its feeling of dread and paranoia is palpable and borderline disturbing. The movie does better in the early sections where small discrepancies and odd moments are subtly dropped into frame, ultimately festering into doubt and uncertainty, rather than the later scenes where x-character bombards the viewer with information too fast to follow. The first ten minutes, as Garrison and his co-workers watch the assassination unfold on TV, is a striking, completely real scene that sets the film's desperate tone well. The movie certainly has its share of striking setpieces - particularly, Garrison's account of Oswald's final day, a striking and power bit of cinematic art, however inaccurate. If viewed as a thriller, a crime film, a work of entertainment, JFK is a masterpiece.
As mentioned above, the film unquestionably excells on a technical level. The editing is what sells the film above all else; Stone and editors Joe Hutshing and Pietro Scalia seamlessly integrate archival footage, including the infamous Zapruder Film and various newsreels and TV broadcasts, with new footage, some of shot in handheld and black-and-white for "authenticity". John Williams' dark, menacing score adds incalcuably to the proceedings, underscoring every scene with a tone of dread and foreboding. As a work of art, it's unquestionably brilliant, aside from a few overlong sequences (namely the final trial, which seems to go on about ten-fifteen minutes too long) slickly paced and thoroughly engrossing. There can be no question that Oliver Stone is (or was, based on his recent output) an extremely talented filmmaker.
For the most part, the all-star cast is excellent. Kevin Costner is perfectly cast as the film's portrayal of Garrison as a straight-arrowed truth seeker, not unlike Eliot Ness in The Untouchables; whatever the ridiculousness of his arguments, Costner is the man to make them convincing. Sissy Spacek is given a thankless indignant wife role, but she and Costner do have nice chemistry. Tommy Lee Jones plays Shaw as an obnoxious gay stereotype; Joe Pesci's colorful Ferrie and Kevin Bacon's gigolo Willie O'Keefe come off better. Donald Sutherland steals the show with a 15-minute sequence laying out the "background" of the conspiracy. Michael Rooker, Laurie Metcalfe, Jay O. Sanders and Wayne Knight provide bench support as Garrison's team. Gary Oldman has disappointingly little screen time as Oswald, but shines with what he has. Cameos by Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, John Candy, Ed Asner and Brian Doyle-Murray all make an impression.
Two viewings of JFK may not be enough to draw a proper bead on it. I recommend it as a film, certainly; it's entertaining, powerful, and technically brilliant, and certainly succeeds at what it sets out to do. To what extent can the film's paranoia and misinformation be excused, however? I leave this for the reader (and viewer) to decide.
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