JFK
Directed by Oliver Stone
With Kevin Costner
Reviewed by Nigel D'Souza
Anyone who was conscious on November 22 1963, is likely to possess memories of that day when John Kennedy was assassinated. For me, three days short of my sixth birthday, memories are of radio news reports and of parents and other adults speaking with a sense of foreboding at the killing of a man many regarded as a campaigner of the rights of the oppressed. This at any rate was the image of John Kennedy, which has persisted since his death.
JFK in its opening scenes captures the chaotic collage of November 1963 so dramatically that I missed most of the credits, only discovering later that the film is based on a book by the protagonist, Jim Garrison, the district attorney of New Orleans.
The reconstruction of the assassination makes for a fascinating tale that spans over three hours, with Oliver Stone intermixing original footage, both black and white and colour, to great effect.
The plot gets a little confusing, however. Despite the length, Stone appears unable to give the audience a clear sense of who, how, what and where without the characters straightforwardly explaining it to the viewer.
The theory is that Lee Harvey was the "patsy", the man set up to cop the blame for what in fact was a conspiracy by the military-industrial complex, the secret intelligence establishment, right-wing Cuban exiles and racist southerners.
Those were indeed tumultuous times in the US. Kennedy, a Catholic of Irish descent, a liberal, was confronted by the black civil rights movement at home and the growing confidence of the USSR on the international scene, which sought to and did ensure the survival of the Cuban Revolution.
For the southern US establishment, which had links with both the military-industrial complex and the secret intelligence bodies, the Kennedy administration's "capitulation" to Khrushchev in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis, its concessions to blacks at home, its refusal to payroll further adventures against Castro and its hesitation in relation to Indochina — the film in fact claims Kennedy intended to keep the US out of Vietnam — signalled the erosion of its domination. Kennedy was spoken of as a dangerous Communist who had to be eliminated.
Stone fails to convincingly draw the links between the individual conspirators — the prosecution that Jim Garrison brought failed — but the overall theory is not absurd.
Although Oliver Stone undoubtedly greatly admires John Kennedy, there are more important issues which he expresses through his alter ego, Garrison.
In a marathon soliloquy, towards the conclusion of the film, Garrison talks passionately about the danger to the values enshrined in the 197> free speech, the right to information and equality — from the cover-up of the Kennedy assassination. He accuses the military-industrial complex of causing wars for gain and of blocking, through the murder of Kennedy, the advance towards a peaceful world.
The cover-up and the theory that Lee Harvey Oswald was the murderer are characterised as the big lie. Garrison equates this with fascism and quotes Hitler about "the bigger the lie, the more they will want to believe it".
I couldn't help feeling that ultimately this film was less about Kennedy and the '60s than about the US in the '90s: the "New World Order" and the Gulf War, and the media lies fed to the people to justify a destructive, wasteful war that benefited nobody but the military-industrial complex.
In JFK, Stone laments the loss of the hope that he and others felt the Kennedy administration held for the US. His message is that Bush and the New World Order are the outcome of that fateful day in November 1963.