Parkland

Parkland was the name of the hospital that President Kennedy was taken to after being shot in Dallas and Peter Landesman's film deals with the events of that day and the days that followed. It's a somewhat better film than the critics gave it credit for though it doesn't add anything to either the truth or the legend and prefers instead to concentrate on how the assassination affected the people on the ground, the hospital staff, the secret service agents, the Oswald family etc.

It's well cast and well played by some very talented players, (Marcia Gay Harden as a nurse, Billy Bob Thornton, Ron Livingston and David Harbour as secret service men, Paul Giametti as Abraham Zapruder, Jackie Weaver and James Badge Dale as Oswald's mother and brother; even Zac Efron as a young doctor who fails to save Kennedy's life is excellent). Landesman shoots it in a semi-documentary style which is fine though perhaps the editing is a little on the busy side; he doesn't seem to like to hold a frame for more than a few seconds at a time. I don't know, of course, how close any of this is to the facts but presumably the film was researched to within a few inches of its life and no matter how often this story has been told on screen it continues to be very moving.

Unlike the highly controversial Executive Action and later Oliver Stone's JFK, Parkland takes no position as to the wider implications of a conspiracy involving the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Instead we get a rather sober docudrama about the four days that if you lived through them you remember every detail that was reported until President Kennedy was lowered into his grave at Arlington.

None of the famous people of the event are shown here at any length. Some are shown briefly, some actors play John and Jacqueline Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. The Oswalds are given more exposure. But the film concentrates on the peripheral characters of the drama, secret service agents, doctors at Parkland Hospital, presidential aides. A bit of the drama of the instant transition of power is involved as the office in a flash of gunfire transfers from one man to another.

Some familiar faces are here. Billy Bob Thornton is the Secret Service agent in charge of the Dallas area, Zac Efron is the young trauma surgeon who makes a vain effort at saving a dead man, Paul Giammati is Abraham Zapruder who took the most famous home movies in the history of the planet.

My favorite is Jacki Weaver the Australian actress who plays Marguerite Oswald. Her son's instant notoriety has elevated as she thinks to some kind of celebrity status. Today that woman would find herself a server and get some kind of blog. Weaver plays her one suit shy of a full deck.

As it does not deal with large issues, just small screw ups Parkland does not have the epic sweep that JFK does. Still it's an interesting and different look at the four most traumatic days of the last century.

¨It's the first time that the secret service has lost a president under its watch.¨

I'm actually surprised I enjoyed this film so much considering the bad reviews it has been receiving and my lack of knowledge on the historical details about the assassination of John F Kennedy. There have been many films made about this specific event, but very few have taken this approach where you get to experience things through the eyes of secondary characters and people behind the scenes like the Parkland medical staff that had to attend the president, or Oswald's brother who is shocked to hear his brother has shot the president. The apparently small scaled moments of this tragic event (like how the medical staff decide to keep the president's boxers on during surgery to preserve his dignity, or the urgency with which the Secret Service agents were trying to get a film of the assassination developed, or how Robert Oswald reacts when he hears that his brother is the prime suspect of the murder) are what truly make this film gripping and unique. The film has its flaws such as failing to have narrative cohesion and the characters are underdeveloped at times, but I think it worked really well considering everything happened so fast and these people had to make split second decisions. The overall feeling of chaos and messiness of the events that took place really transcend here as everything happens so fast and the film is reduced to a length of merely 90 minutes. The film follows a semi documentary style that totally works because you can feel the tension and urgency with which they had to deal with during such a catastrophic event. Parkland is Peter Landesman's first feature film and somehow the movie touched me in a way that apparently hasn't touched most audiences or critics. I didn't expect to like this film as much as I did, but I really felt engaged from the very opening scenes up to the very end. It doesn't offer new insight to a popular historical event, but it does tell the story differently. As we approach the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's death this might be a movie worth checking out (just don't go into it thinking you are going to get another Oliver Stone JFK). The film's strongest strength relies on this sense of urgency and how it depicts the events in real time as everyone had to make life changing decisions in a matter of seconds. But it also seems to be its weakness as many consider it to be a little too over the place and chaotic with little cohesiveness.

The film follows the tragic events that occurred in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963 involving the assassination of President John F Kennedy. The story focuses on the perspective of the people in the sidelines that witnessed the event first hand like the medical staff in Parkland Hospital that were there that tragic day. Young Doctor Jim Carrico (Zac Efron) was the resident doctor that day in Parkland, and some of the nurses that were there to assist him were Nurse Doris (Marcia Gay Harden) and the emergency room nurse played by Mallory Moye. We get another perspective of that day through the eyes of a small businessman named Abraham Zapruder (Paul Giamatti), who happened to capture the assassination on his Super 8 camera. We also see things through the eyes of Dallas's chief of the Secret Service, Forrest Sorrels (Billy Bob Thornton), an FBI agent named James Hosty (Ron Livingston) who was investigating Lee Harvey Oswald (Jeremy Strong), and Lee Harvey's brother Robert (James Badge Dale) and mother (Jacki Weaver) who react differently to the news about the murder. All these different perspectives are weaved together giving us an engaging film and different insight into what was going on. Tom Welling, Mark Duplass, Colin Hanks, Jackie Earle Haley, and Kat Steffens all play secondary characters in this star studded cast.

There were some strong performances in this film although not really Oscar worthy. I specially liked James Badge Dale in this film who gives a quiet but brave performance, while Paul Giamatti rings true with his emotional performance as he has to deal with the pain of viewing the horrific event he captured on camera. The rest of the cast didn't really stand out considering they all had very little screen time, but it was good to see some of these talented actors working together. Jacki Weaver is a talented actress and she proves it once again in this small role. The cast is solid and the script is also pretty engaging. I was glad everything was depicted so fast and that the film didn't run too long.

A certain generation gained its knowledge of the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy from Oliver Stone's JFK. Don't get me wrong, JFK remains a fine film, but there's a danger of believing the conspiracies are factual. Parkland, Peter Landesman's directorial debut, doesn't necessarily right any wrongs but it does approach the assassination with a clean slate.

Parkland unfolds the story we are all familiar with, but manages to shock thoroughly as it recounts the events of 22 November 1963 and the immediate aftermath before the conspiracy theories and thoughts of dark dealings beyond the obvious murder emerged. Landesman manages to numb us, playing our own horror and sense of helplessness across the faces of the protagonists before us as their innocence is lost and their faith in humanity is rocked.

Central to Parkland is Abraham Zapruder (Paul Giamatti), the man who inadvertently shot one of the most important 26.6 seconds of film in American history: the arrival of the President's cavalcade and his harrowing, public execution at the hands (probably) of Lee Harvey Oswald. We watch Giamatti's Zapruder evolve from confident boss to shuddering, emotional mess as he realizes just what he has recorded and the impact that footage will have on the world and his own life. It is very easy to view Zapruder as a fortunate man, a man who in a lucky half minute, shot himself fame and financial security, but Giamatti flawlessly portrays a man who just might crumple permanently under the weight and pressure from the police, the Secret Service, the press...

At every turn in Parkland there is another character recoiling in their own horror, undergoing their own life-changing trauma, and each is played with the sensitivity demanded in order for Parkland not to be a mawkish, voyeuristic experience.

After last year's The Paperboy (but overlooking the awful The Lucky One), it's definitely time to take Zac Effron seriously as an actor. As Doctor Charles 'Jim' Carrico, the young doctor called upon to put his own emotions aside and fight for the life of his President as the First Lady weeps in the corner holding a chunk of her husband's brain, he looks shell shocked and as numbed by the events as we feel.

Subtler is James Badge Dale as Robert Oswald, another man whose life is irrevocably changed by the actions of a man, who happens to be his brother. At first shocked by the shooting, he retreats into himself as realisation dawns, emerging only to castigate his deluded mother, Marguerite (Jacki Weaver), who sees an opportunity for fame and hero's honours for her youngest son.

But Parkland is such a powerful film for much more than the performances. They say the devil is in the detail and it is the minutia that kicks us in the gut the hardest. The obvious is overlooked in favour of the finer points. We never see the Zapruder film clearly or in its entirety but the sound of Jim Carrico pumping the President's chest while the gathered crowd watches silently and without hope, goes right through us. The handle of the coffin torn off as the agents lift it out of the hearse, the panic as they realise it will not fit into Air Force One, the hasty removal of the aircraft panel with saw and shoulder... They all serve to make the situation real, the horror genuine and immediate.

Landesman has created a film of morality; not just the obvious judgment towards murder, but the more difficult matters of a church burial for a man despised by the population, the suspicion thrown at the family and the blame levied at those who could have prevented the act if they had had the benefit of foresight. Parkland is an emotional journey the delivers a series of punches to leave us reeling.

Yes, we know the story, even though we may not have even breathed our first breath in 1963, but have we experienced the emotion before now?

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Are we any closer to the truth? Has Walter Cronkite suddenly appeared on channel 4 to tell us that it was all just a close call? Did Lee Oswald have his day in court?

We are all damaged goods in the aftermath. Poor Zapruder: the horror in his face as played by Giamatti, he'd never feel pleasure in running his 8mm camera to catch his grandchildren playing. Secret Service agent Sorrells reminding all that they dropped the ball, the sense of shame he must have felt. Hosty, realizing he could have stopped it all if he had only... just ... followed through.

This isn't a time travel story showing how the past can't be changed, or an explanation of how his head travelled "back, and to the left..." Nor is it a parody, with a spit ball travelling "back, and to the left..." or a National Lampoon of the first ten thousand days of JFK.

This is as close to a documentary as could be giving us a horrible taste in our mouths how events can turn cruel, how they can be relentless and how we, those of us who were alive in those days, can be drawn back into it and the fog of remembrance is ripped away, renewed with little details.