The case against JFK (1991)
I think Oliver Stone’s JFK is a very bad film, but, really, it’s bad in ways that are not very interesting. I’m not sure if it’s possible to make a three-and-a-half-hour propaganda rant good, but Stone doesn’t come close. Every character in the movie is instantly convinced of conspiracy on the flimsiest of evidence, and the only one who expresses any dissenting voice is, you guessed it, a paid-off traitor; I’ve seen more balanced texts produced by cults. In a dramatic and original plot twist, the husband is too driven by his work, and his wife complains he doesn’t pay enough attention to her! She even says she wont show up at the trial to support him, but then, in a dramatic reversal, she does! The estranged colleague shows up too, in case the cliche was insufficiently hammered it. Its all pretty embarrassing, and, as I said, not very interesting.
What is interesting, I think, is why Stone felt he had to make this film. Fortunately, he’s not a very deep or complicated director, and everything he does is easy to figure out.
Lee Harvey Oswald (the real-life guy, not Gary Oldman) was basically a loser who did one impressive thing in his life: he managed to kill a president with a shot no one thought he could make. Possibly a lucky shot, possibly a demonstration of skill, this is nevertheless all Oswald has left the world with. Not what anyone would call a good act, it was inarguably a great act, and it is not often that a mediocre talent manages to accomplish a great act. Oliver Stone wants to take it away from him. Oliver Stone does not want Kennedy to be killed by a loser.
Although I do not like Kennedy very much, I cannot take exception with two of his policies: he was pro-space and anti-communist. Take away the rapes and drugs, the snottiness and the condescension, and you’ll have in these two policies an admirable legacy I think JFK would be proud of, a pro-space, anti-communist legacy. Oliver Stone wants to take that away from him.
Partway through JFK, we learn from one of the innumerable lectures that make up this movie manque that Kennedy was going to abandon the moon race and end the Cold War during his second term; he was shot to prevent this. Since even a rudimentary knowledge of communist ideology in general and Soviet policy specifically would tell you that the only way for Kennedy to end the Cold War would be to turn all of Europe and perhaps all of the free world over to the USSR, this latter claim is patent nonsense (the former claim is not exactly backed up with a storehouse of facts, either), but it is revealing. Oliver Stone clearly idolizes Kennedy, for whatever reason, and his drugged-out Hollywood socialist Boomer leanings do not permit his hero to do something actually admirable. Kennedy the Cold Warrior has no doubt been rankling at him for years. The fact that Kennedy expanded the war in Vietnam must have had Stone (who, it is well know, supports democidal dictatorships throughout Asia) seeking high and low for a way to absolve the saint of these sins.
The movie has everything to do with Boomer fantasy and nothing to do with such considerations as reality. Martin Luther King gets killed, and Kevin Costner (a worthy Oliver Stone stand-in/mouthpiece) shakes his head, wisely. Clearly this one is a product of conspiracy, too. (It is interesting to see how a conspiracy so vast that it can kill witnesses and celebrities with impunity permitted Stone to make this film with nary an obstruction.) Costner (who technically plays imbalanced glory-hound Garrison and not imbalanced glory-hound Stone) even manages to predict RFKs assassination.
And here we see that there is more at stake than Kennedy‘s sainthood, inconveniently compromised as it is by the great man’s failure to be a hippie peace activist. What is at stake is the sanctity of the ’60s, a decade of peace and love. Because if one giant right-wing conspiracy is not behind all the bloodshed of the ’60s, then the only other possible conclusion is that during this beloved decade people started behaving badly. I thought I saw Bobby walking over the hill with Abraham, Martin, and John (as Dion said) and either right-wingers (boo! hiss!) killed them or ordinary people who have to take responsibility for their actions killed them. Perhaps the right-wingers torched Watts. Perhaps they killed Malcolm X. Certainly they killed Sharon Tate! Either a conspiracy was wrecking America or America was wrecking America. I can see why it is easier for Stone to believe the former. It’s too bad he decided to memorialize in film his weakness and insecurity.
