My theory about Stone is at least as sound as his about the assassination.
He determined to do this film after reading Garrison's book, which
(reportedly) argues that Kennedy was murdered by the military-industrial
complex and its friends in order to increase the American presence
in Vietnam. (Stone also acquired an assassination book by Jim Marrs.
) He engaged the editor of Garrison's book, Zachary Sklar, to collaborate
with him on the screenplay. The film posits that Kennedy had begun
an American withdrawal -- he had in fact ordered a thousand "advisers"
to return -- and that Lyndon Johnson conspired with tycoons and the
Pentagon to prevent further withdrawals. (What Kennedy's future Vietnam
policy might have been is far from certain, but even Tom Wicker, a
severe critic of the film's historicity, concedes "that Kennedy might
not have expanded the war as President Johnson did in 1964.") JFK
begins with a clip of Eisenhower's attack on the military-industrial
complex, and it ends with a statement of Vietnam casualties -- 58,
000 Americans, millions of Asians. For Oliver Stone, set on his fiery
if tendentious course, Dealey Plaza leads to the Tonkin Gulf.
Charges of exaggerations in the film, omissions, fantasies, have
crammed newspapers and magazines for weeks. Stone's defense sidesteps
many of the charges -- about the Vietnam connection and other matters
-- and concentrates on what he now calls his prime purpose: to pillory
the Warren Commission Report and other cover-ups. (He might have added
that such a cover-up is not new: there are still unanswered questions
about Lincoln's murder.) A comment in a recent issue of The Economist
is relevant: To criticize the details of Mr. Stone's "theory" misses
why it is so seductive. The barely stated premise of JFK is that the
assassination of Kennedy was a historical watershed. Had he not been
killed, everything would have been different. No Vietnam. No race
riots. No drug culture. Instead, Camelot. It is a view Mr. Stone has
expressed again and again in interviews. It is also a view shared,
more or less consciously, by millions of Americans. If the assassination
changed so much, the argument continues, it seems all the more implausible
that it could have been the work of a lonely fool like Oswald; an
event so big surely deserves a big villain, such as the military-industrial
complex.
A film such as this has special responsibilities, which I don'
t mean to ignore; but first a word about something that its detractors
tend to scant -- JFK itself. The film is a whirlwind, a torrent. Its
fierce main current, the Garrison story, sweeps along with attendant
swirls and eddies. Stone keeps that story -- and its references and
hypotheses -- as visible as possible, aiming at increased clarity
rather than pyrotechnics, yet it is virtuoso work. He mixes actualities,
like bits of the Zapruder film, with seeming actualities in color
or in grainy black and white. (Objectors to this method presumably
would have had him label his own work "simulation." A more appropriate
label, if one is needed, would be "speculation.") Throughout the
cascading film I kept wanting to see more, more, more -- and it runs
three hours. (It happened both times I saw JFK.)
Even when there's a sense of manipulation -- Garrison meets an
informant in D.C. in front of the Lincoln Memorial and they end their
conversation with the Washington Monument in the background -- it
never seems shrewd cynicism, only a somewhat wide-eyed eagerness to
believe. Very few Hollywood people today make films primarily out
of conviction, particularly political conviction. Admittedly it's
easy to overvalue JFK because it's a rarity that way, but it's also
easy to undervalue it cinematically because of its political and historical
garishness.
Garrison, the New Orleans district attorney in November 1963,
is worried by the way the Kennedy assassination has been investigated.
Three years later he finds reasons to prosecute Clay Shaw, a prominent
New Orleans businessman, on conspiracy charges in connection with
the murder. Government agencies like the cia are mentioned. (The homosexuality
of Shaw and friends is dramatized, not as criminal but as a linkage
in this group.) Garrison's evidence presents questions about the Kennedy
murder that are still unanswered; but he loses the case. (A closing
title informs us that Shaw, who died in 1974, was subsequently identified
by Richard Helms as a cia agent, but of course this doesn't necessarily
tie Shaw to the killing.) Garrison remains convinced that powerful
forces have conspired to conceal the truth, which may not be known
until 2029, when the files of the House Select Committee on Assassinations
will be opened.
Kevin Costner plays Garrison, and patently the real Garrison
was cosmeticized in several ways. Probably this was part of the price
of getting a highly bankable star for the role and of keeping him
bankable. As a Garrison fictionalized in temperament and focus, Costner
is engaging. He's not a powerful actor, but he's a friendly one. The
film is capped with his lengthy address to the jury in the Shaw trial.
I'd suggest that if Costner is going to play Jimmy Stewart parts
he ought to listen to Stewart's voice. Costner's is limited.
Sissy Spacek has the stock, tiresome role of a wife -- this time
named Mrs. Garrison -- imploring her busy husband to spend more time
with her and the children. (One curious Freudian moment: the news
of Robert Kennedy's assassination proves a sexual stimulant to Mr.
and Mrs. G.) Tommy Lee Jones plays Shaw with unexpected poise and
elegance. Kevin Bacon, as one of his homosexual friends, has perfect
modulation, attack, implication. Joe Pesci, in the best performance
of his that I've seen, plays David Ferrie, another of the gay band,
bewigged and with false eyebrows, moving us with his fear for his
life. Donald Sutherland is the Deep Throat of this story (a character
synthesized from several men) who meets Garrison in Washington; he
invests his one long sequence with the authenticity that is as natural
to him as breathing. John Candy, as a lawyer friend of Garrison's
in New Orleans, shows yet again that he is not just a fat man employed
because of his size, he is a genuine actor. Ed Asner, cast against
type, plays a brutal reactionary private eye; Jack Lemmon manages
to overact even in the small role of his sidekick. These major people
in minor roles are votes of confidence in Stone, no more clearly so
than with Walter Matthau's brief appearance as Senator Russell Long.
(The real Garrison is hastily visible as Earl Warren.)
Robert Richardson, Stone's usual cinematographer, has given the
flashbacks verite and the "present" sequences a prevalent golden-red
"southern" light. The editors, wizards both, were Joe Rutshing and
Pietro Scalia. With Stone, all three of these men have made a film
whose onward course can almost be heard -- the whole notes, the half
and quarter and eighth and sixteenth notes, the trills, the glissandi.
Consistent with this aural image, the film seems to have an unceasing
low roar under it until there's a sudden break for the quiet in which
Costner makes his long courtroom speech.
Cinematically, JFK is almost a complete success. (The tedious
Garrison family scenes are a bow to necessity.) But is it fitting
that the very power of this film should serve questionable history?
The customary acceptance of historical inaccuracy in art works --
in Shakespeare, Schiller, Shaw, for instance -- is slight defense
here. Or to take a film example: few historians would endorse the
values, or all the details, in John Ford westerns, but to everyone
save the mentally unbalanced, Ford's values and details are the lineaments
of an American romance; and contemporary application is slight. Viewers
of JFK, however, might find themselves shaken in their views of government,
society, the media. Certainly this disruption might be salutary for
us -- if it were more soundly based.
The whole situation resolves, for me, to a state of tension among
five elements. First, JFK is a fine piece of filmmaking. Second, it
is a passionate work in an art that is mostly treated as an industry.
Third, it distorts facts in the assassination theory it presents.
Fourth, it strongly underscores our incomplete knowledge about the
assassination and possible conspiracy. (Let's all check this in 2029.
) Fifth, although the proof that Kennedy was killed because of the
war is very slim, the film is one more outcry against the waste and
horror of Vietnam. As with a prism, we can rotate this set of elements
so that we are looking at only one of them at a time. But even while
we are looking at only one of them, all the other elements are true.
By Stanley Kauffmann
New Republic is the property of New Republic and may not be copied without the express written permission of New Republic
Kauffmann, S., Dallas.., Vol. 206, New Republic, 01-27-1992, pp 26.