Featuring the scenes of President John F. Kennedy’s funeral, the drive to the hospital from the Texas shooting, and stoic, thoughtful insights from Mrs. Kennedy (Portman), the trailer captivates for every second of its two-and-a-half minute run time.
Dark and full of thoughtful quotations, the film appears to deal with the divide between public and private life for the famed first family, as well as the significant toll that loss can take on those in the public eye.
“People like to believe in fairy tales,” Portman’s character opines as the trailer begins, “I believe that the characters that we read about on the page end up being more real than the men who stand beside us.”
As can be expected of a film about the first lady of Camelot, which stars a former Oscar winner, Jackie has been a critical darling so far, having generated significant buzz at Cannes, and won Best Screenplay at the Venice Film Festival, and the Platform Prize at the Toronto Film Festival. Time will tell how the film does on bigger stages, but given the subject matter and the star, it wouldn’t be outlandish to expect the film has high hopes of a few Academy Award nominations.
Jackie was directed by Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larrain Matte. It was based on a script by Noah Oppenheim, a former Emmy-Winner TV producer who also wrote the screenplay for The Divergent Series: Allegiant — Part 1. Peter Sarsgaard, Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup, Richard E. Grant, and John Hurt co-star in the film.
Jackie will debut to limited audiences on December 2, in the heat of the awards-seeking release season. Fox Searchlight will helm the release.