Murtada reporting from NYFF.
Thursday night marked the first New York public screening of Jackie. Pablo Larraín’s film about the former first lady in the few days after JFK’s assassination, took Venice and TIFF by storm and now it's NYFF’s turn...
Among those who attended the screening were Larraín, producer Darren Aronofsky, Natalie Portman who is topping many Oscar best actress charts and co-star Peter Sarsgaard who plays Bobby Kennedy. Natalie's Oscar buzz is well earned but more impressive was Larrain’s filmmaking; it’s so precise I felt like he was sticking in a knife right through my heart.
In the post screening Q and A there was a lot of talk about accents, Natalie’s of course but also Sarsgaard’s. Both actors said that nailing the voice was their entry into the parts. Portman worked with a dialect coach and listened to the White House Tour - which is recreated in the film - over and over. She was mindful to give her Jackie both a private and public voice as she found out in her research that Jackie sounded different depending on the forum. On the first day of shooting Larraín was so taken aback that he told her it was too much. Now he says Portman actually didn’t go all the way because if she had replicated the accent 100%, it would have been hard to connect with the character. The biggest laugh came when Larrain imitated Sarsgaard saying “Jackie” as Bobby, which he revealed is his ringtone.
The film’s score is also a highlight. Larraín first heard Mica Levi’s work while serving on the Venice Film Festival jury in 2013, where Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin competed. While many on that jury didn't like Skin, Larraín, along with fellow juror composer Ryuichi Sakamoto (The Revenant) tried to award Levi for her work, to no avail.
The conversation ended with Larraín stating that making a movie so focused on one actor, is a risk that demands a lot of generosity from the rest of the cast. The hardest part for him was not making a movie in English for the first time, but rather making a movie from a woman’s POV as all his previous movies had male protagonists.
Jackie opens in limited release on December 9th. Here's Nathaniel's review if you missed it.