Jean Seberg - Against All Enemies

Greetings again from the darkness. "Who is Jean Seberg?" A reporter asks the question to her, just before the movie star's agent escorts him away as she prepares for publicity shots on PAINT YOUR WAGON, the outlandish 1969 musical-comedy in which she co-starred with Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin. It's also a question we expect a film entitled SEBERG to answer, though it never really does. Oh sure, we get the basics: small town girl (Marshalltown, Iowa), Hollywood starlet, activist, target of FBI, and tragic ending. Unwisely, the film tries to cram in too many other pieces of a puzzle - a puzzle plenty interesting on its own.

Kristen Stewart stars as Jean Seberg, the breakout star of the French New Wave Cinema in Jean-Luc Godard's BREATHLESS (1960). Ms. Stewart brings much more than a short haircut to the role. It's not a stretch to imagine Ms. Stewart has experienced some of the downside to fame that Ms. Seberg experienced during her career, so it's no surprise that the moments of torment and frustration and anxiety are the film's best. Even as a teenager in Iowa, Ms. Seberg showed signs of an activist-in-development. She ran off to Hollywood and was discovered by director Otto Preminger and cast in the lead role for his SAINT JOAN (1957). Seberg actually suffered severe burns during the filming of a key scene - one which is reenacted by Stewart for this film.

Director Benedict Andrews working with a script from Joe Shrapnel (grandson of actress Deborah Kerr) and Anna Waterhouse (they also co-wrote THE AFTERMATH and RACE), focuses mostly on the period of 1968-1971. We see Seberg's first encounter with Hakim Abdullah Jamal (Anthony Mackie) on a commercial flight, and her follow-up pose with the Black Panthers for a publicity shot on the tarmac. This kicks off an FBI investigation, as well as an affair between Seberg (married to novelist and filmmaker Romain Gary, played by Yvan Attal) and Jamal (married to Dorothy, played by Zazie Beetz). We see how Seberg landed on Hoover's FBI watch list, and how she was sincerely trying to help what she saw as a worthy cause.

We watch the FBI meticulously build a file on Seberg, albeit illegally under the COINTELPRO (counter-intelligence program) program. Surveillance was used to work towards their goal of running a smear campaign against Seberg due to her support of the Black Panther Party. Jack O'Connell plays FBI Agent Jack Solomon, and Vince Vaughan plays his partner Carl Kowalski. Family dinner time at the Kowalski home is anything but leisurely fun, and it's an unnecessary scene meant to contrast Kowalski's character with that of Solomon. It's here where the film falters. An inordinate amount of time is spent on Agent Solomon and his conscience and his med-student wife Linette (a sinfully underutilized Margaret Qualley).

The film would have been best served by focusing on either Seberg or Solomon. The two stories dilute the effectiveness, and beyond that, the Black Panther story line fades, as does the whole celebrity-as-an-activist subplot. Instead, Seberg's breakdown and Solomon's second thoughts share center-stage. The film does succeed in exposing the extremes Hoover's organization would go to in order to discredit someone whose beliefs might not have meshed with what was deemed proper for the times. What happened to Seberg was a tragedy, and according to Mr. Gary, led to the loss of her career and eventually to her death.

The film bounces from Paris to Los Angeles, and the set decorations and costumes are picture perfect for the era. There are actual Black Panther clips shown, and Ms. Stewart also reenacts a scene from BREATHLESS. Regardless of the script and story issues, Kristen Stewart delivers a terrific performance as Jean Seberg, and keeps our attention the entire time. We like her and feel for her as she slips. The real Ms. Seberg was found dead in a car at age 40, and suicide was suspected, though mystery still surrounds her death to this day. Lastly, just a piece of free advice ... if you are looking to do good things in life, having a marital affair is rarely the right first step.

It is sometimes hard to pinpoint where exactly films fail, the cinematography wasn't bad and you can definitely see that Kristen Stewart tried, but everything else about this film was below mediocre. Characters were one dimensional and lacked any depth, plot development, from the very moment the two main characters meet and then meet again, was abrupt and unbelievable. The other main characters - the good FBI agent vs. the bad one, were just as shallow. Not to mention the wives, whose role never went anywhere and might have as well not been in this film at all.

In the end, it simply wasn't interesting to watch and that is something no amount of blank long gazes and gratuitous nudity can fix.

If you haven't yet, do yourself a favor and watch 'The Lives of Others', a 2006 German film that shares a similar theme but actually does it justice.

I don't need to review the whole story of Jean Seberg, or this film, which is well done.. Other reviews and sources do that. This film touches on several aspects of her career, just enough to give us a sense of who she was and how her support of the Black movement in the US was her undoing. And how the FBI was unjust in using her to discredit that black movement.. All that aside, Kristen Stewart is the real deal. This is an actress that I believe will win an Oscar if the right parts come her way.

I managed to watch this on Amazon streaming movies, my wife skipped.

This movie is somewhat better than its IMDb rating might suggest, mainly because mysteriously there are about 12% "1" votes in May 2020. No way could this ever be considered that poor a movie.

Kristen Stewart is chosen to play Jean Seberg, the story is mainly from 1968 to about 1971 or 1972 when she was in her early 30s. Living in France at that time with her French family she traveled to Los Angeles and during the trip took an interest in the black civil rights movement and protests.

This got her on the FBI radar and what followed was much surveillance, recording of conversations, and eventually a concerted effort to discredit her. It is noteworthy that she died at age 40 in 1979 from "probable suicide."

The movie is well made but I have to wonder, "Why was this movie made?" Seberg was a minor star and I suspect few living today remember any of her roles. Still it is a worthwhile movie if not a stellar one.

Jean Seberg's real life story is full of twists and turns and things that can be applied to things happening in 2020. Unfortunately, the movie doesn't separate itself from the pack and become anything fresh or original. And it feels like you can contribute some of the fault to the directing choices made by Benedict Andrews. The film never felt as engaging as the subject matter calls for. Seberg is deserving of a movie based on her life, but this certainly wasn't it.

4.8/10