Claire Folger
Paul Giamatti is Abraham Zapruder, a private citizen who unwittingly shot arguably the most famous 26 seconds of film in history, in “Parkland.”
Peter Landesman’s “Parkland” is set half a century ago, in the fall of 1963. But the movie winds up telling us far more about our own time than the nation-changing event that it depicts.
“Parkland” begins on Nov. 22, with the entire city of Dallas electrified by the upcoming appearance of President Kennedy (Brett Stimely) and his beautiful young wife, Jackie (Kat Steffens). Within hours, the landscape of the city — and history — has been permanently altered.
Landesman has chosen to focus not on the Kennedys, but several orbiting witnesses. Two doctors (Zac Efron, Colin Hanks) and a nurse (Marcia Gay Harden) are stunned to find themselves on call at Parkland Memorial Hospital when the President is rushed into the emergency room.
Family man Abraham Zapruder (Paul Giamatti) watches his life unravel, simply because he happened to record the President’s appearance — and assassination.
Claire Folger
Jeremy Strong stars as Lee Harvey Oswald in “Parkland.”
Upstanding patriot Robert Oswald Jr. (James Badge Dale) is not nearly as excited as his mother (Jacki Weaver) to hear his brother’s name suddenly appear on the radio. And did Special Agent Hosty (Ron Livingston) have Lee Harvey Oswald (Jeremy Strong) in the office just days earlier, only to let him go?
Approaching such an enormous, endlessly analyzed experience from the outside in does make sense. But Landesman, making his directorial debut, needed to focus further still. With the exception of an empathetic, understated Dale, there are too many lesser-known characters for any to make an impact. And the famous players primarily remind us of the film’s falsity.
Steffens appears especially intimidated by her role, and it’s hard to blame her. Like all icons, the real Jackie Kennedy played herself better than anyone else ever could. Giamatti is saddled with self-aware dialogue about the conspiracy theories that would later blossom from Zapruder’s footage. And while Marguerite Oswald may have been a maternal monster, Weaver’s voracious overacting feels out of place in this somber setting.
But if the film is a failure as an historical biopic, it’s also a surprisingly effective, often jolting reflection of our own times. Landesman is clearly aware that it’s impossible to view the movie without imagining how such a tragedy would unfold today. And he highlights the differences with pointed insight.
Claire Folger
Billy Bob Thornton as Forrest Sorrels, the head of the Secret Service in Dallas, in “Parkland”
Dallas law enforcement (as represented by Billy Bob Thornton) is helplessly dependent on Zapruder’s single copy of film. News is passed slowly and carefully. Television reporters refuse to speculate until they have hard facts in hand.
Our culture is so changed we can’t help but watch and think of Twitter, of YouTube, of 24-hour cable and the countless citizens who record and evaluate every major event.
So perhaps it’s inevitable that the movie works best not while we’re watching fictional recreations, but when we see real footage or hear actual broadcasts.
Landesman leaves us with these words, spoken by Walter Cronkite 50 years before our elected representatives chose to shut down their own government: “If in the search of our conscience, we find a new dedication to the American concepts that brook no political, sectional, religious or racial divisions, then maybe it may yet be possible to say that John Fitzgerald Kennedy did not die in vain.”
eweitzman@nydailynews.com
http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info/?p=14981
via Great Local News: New York http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info
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