by Sean Donovan
You sit down in a movie theater to see the latest biopic that has earned a superstar Oscar heat, and after the series of trailers for undoubtedly happier movies you could be seeing, you stare at a black screen. Gradually you hear something, a strong string note that quickly careens down the scale into dissonant whine. It’s immediately upsetting, destabilizing: flat and lacking grace when you were promised a classy portrait of one of America’s most iconic first ladies. So disjunctive it possesses a strange, ethereal beauty. It reminds me of the sound of an airplane flying overhead, fitting for a film where some of the most dramatic scenes occur onboard Air Force One.
Music is the standard-bearer for everything that makes Jackie an unusual Oscar contender...
a frosty film that emphasizes the un-ending pain of grief and refuses to give the audience a warm shoulder to cry upon. We cinephiles learn to work with the biopic, we expect a few every year to draw undue praise from critics and awards groups, falling head over heels in love with stories of great individuals from history while other more creative work goes under-praised. Jackie is different, as its own award season batting average emphasizes: voters are quick to honor the costume-y drag of Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy (to my mind the least interesting part of this massively interesting film) but hesitant to embrace the other aspects of the film. Mica Levi’s music sets that tone of surprising expectations, introducing and paving the way for an experimental film that negates any “Great Woman of History” presentation for a more personal internalized examination of grief.
Levi is already known to many filmgoers for her iconic work on the score for Under the Skin, where her dissonant whirring and whining matched that story of extraterrestrial visitation perfectly. Levi is a surprising match for Jackie, but just as Scarlett Johansson’s alien felt out of place in Under the Skin, inhabiting a body she barely understood, so does Jackie depict a first lady becoming increasingly cognizant of her hollow costume, this creation that is “Jackie Kennedy” weaving her narrative of Camelot. Mica Levi’s injection of her creepy stringed ambience helps this self-discovery take a clear focus in the film.
Aside from Portman’s equal rival to the Best Actress throne, Emma Stone in La La Land, the lead acting races of the Oscars 2016 are dominated by two portraits of immense grief and mourning, Portman here and Casey Affleck in Manchester by the Sea. Manchester has a musical score worthy of its protagonist: muted and understated, suppressing the wells of emotion within. Jackie is an opposite depiction of grief: while Affleck’s Lee locks everything inside, Portman’s Jackie creates a spectacle for the world, demanding a more and more extravagant funeral demonstration in a futile attempt to get the external world to match her internal sorrow. Such demonstrative grief needs a score to go with it, and you cannot sit through Jackie without being compelled by its radically unhinged music.
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Jackie | Biopics | Composers | FYCs | Oscar Race