Parkland

I was 12 when President Kennedy was assassinated. Even though I am Canadian, it was a huge deal for us. I remember seeing him and his wife Jacquie coming out of the Church of the Ascension in Westmount Montreal sometime in 1962 or thereabouts. No crowds, no security, you could feel something exciting about him. North America changed profoundly after that. This movie does not put forward any theories about what took place at Dealey Plaza, but it does show with great accuracy how normal people are affected by extraordinary events. No matter how well we are prepared for things, when disaster strikes it takes everyone off guard and chaos ensues. Look at current events and we see the same thing. The mixture of archival footage was done exactly right, so you felt that you were really there. Despite the horrible circumstances, by the simple acts of ordinary people, one could see that not everyone had lost their humanity. The acting was superb, Marcia Harden, Billy Bob Thornton, Paul Giamatti and Zac Efron in particular.

Greetings again from the darkness. Fifty years of investigation and research have spawned an endless number of theories about what happened, how it happened, and why it happened, that tragic day in 1963. President John F Kennedy and his lovely wife Jacqueline had captured the hearts of many Americans, and on a trip to Ft Worth and then Dallas, the streets were lined with eager citizens who just wanted to catch a glimpse ... hoping some of that Camelot magic would rub off. Instead, a city and a country, went spinning off into feelings of anger and devastation. Rather than show us what we already know, this is a peek at a few individuals impacted in ways you might not have previously thought about.

Vincent Bugliosi made a name for himself as the prosecutor in the Charles Manson Family murder case, and then penning the corresponding book Helter Skelter (subsequently made into a movie). This movie is based on Bugliosi's book "Four Days in November: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy".

The main stories we follow are that of Abraham Zapruder (Paul Giamatti), Lee Harvey Oswald's brother Robert (James Badge Dale), their mother Margueritte (Jacki Weaver), Secret Service Agent Forrest Sorrels (Billy Bob Thornton), local FBI Agent James Hosty (Ron Livingston), and the emergency room doctors and nurses who treated JFK and Oswald (Zac Efron, Colin Hanks, Marcia Gay Harden). You might think that's too many stories for a single movie, and you are probably correct. However, it's fascinating to see the frenetic pace and immediate fallout of just how these people were impacted. Sure, we would like more details and backstory, but that's not the approach this film takes. It just provides a taste of the gut-wrenching decisions Mr. Zapruder has to make while grieving for his beloved President; and the shock of Oswald's brother as reality hits; the stomach-churning delusions of Oswald's mother; the absolute frustration of the CIA and FBI agents knowing their historic failures will be their legacy; and the disparate emotions that enter the operating rooms with Kennedy and Oswald.

The film doesn't take any stance on the grassy knoll, CIA involvement, LBJ involvement, or number of shooters. This is not a crime solving story or research into conspiracy theories. No, this is a look at real people in extraordinary situations that no amount of preparation can pacify. There are so many little details revealed ... one of the most powerful occurring at the Lee Harvey Oswald funeral, and another as the JFK casket is loaded onto Air Force One just prior to LBJ taking the oath. So many little things you have probably never before considered.

If you were alive at the time of the assassination, you understand the impact. If you have read any of the stacks of books written about that day, you understand what happened and the messy investigation that followed. Bugliosi and director Peter Landesman effectively mix news reels from the day with dramatizations of the fallout, and the actors do a tremendous job of showing just how personal this affected those at the time. A different perspective brings with it interesting discussion ... and a big thanks if your mother is nothing like Oswald's!

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.

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.