JFK (1991)
The assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy is perhaps the greatest source of conspiracy theories in the history of the United States. What happens if you make a movie that leans into this? As it turns out, you get one of the
greatest political thrillers of all time, maybe even one of the greatest movies of all time. It is a long, ambitious, star-studded, and sometimes weird movie that explores theories created by several people, primarily those
put forward by the late Jim Garrison. Indeed, Jim Garrison is the main character, and the movie follows his struggle to prove that Oswald didn't act alone and undirected. Whether or not you actually think Oswald was a patsy or a
second shooter or whatever is irrelevant; we're only here to see Garrison dive headfirst into a web of lies and deceit. JFK believes him, and it's here to take you with it.
JFK is a long movie. The director's cut is three and a half hours long, and the Garrison team doesn't even really start their investigation proper until almost exactly an hour in. And yet, somehow, it never felt like the film
ever drew out its welcome. Even with TWO 15+ minute long monologues (some of the best acting in the movie), it still feels like an hour-long movie at the most. JFK is painstakingly thorough and does its best to account for
all elements of the assassination. The Zapruder film, the Carcano rifle, Jack Ruby, the grassy knoll, the magic bullet theory, L. Fletcher Prouty's testimony, it's all explained and explained again to riveting effect. It's a lot to take in, and the movie plays this up by intersecting real footage with movie beats as they become relevant. Audio interweaves with dialogue, flashbacks are cut in and out (usually in black and white), and the music swells and
regresses with the flow of dialogue. The movie WANTS you to enter the same paranoid headspace as Garrison. Nowhere is this more obvious than the halfway point monologue carried out by Donald Sutherland's character, known only as X.
X revealing the plot in Dallas to Garrison might be my favorite scene in any movie ever. It is a masterpiece in acting, editing, writing, composition and whatever else you can think of. Sutherland is in only this scene for about fifteen minutes, and it's the standout performance. It's all delivered in such a way that it almost makes me believe that he was really there and saw it all happen. If you extracted that scene and made it a short film, it would be better written than most other conspiracy thrillers. It's a miracle that the rest of the movie can even compete with this one scene.
JFK has a laser focus on disputing the popular narrative. Does that mean what we conclude as fact is real? Probably. The movie is what the director Oliver Stone calls a "counter-myth", seeking to if nothing else provoke thought and discussion into how real our history is. Did JFK draw the ire of the CIA? Was it a coup d'etat? It's unlikely, in fact it's almost certainly untrue. But what if? No one will ever truly, completely know what really conspired to bring about November 22, 1963. The endless font of stories, real or not, continue to release from the conspiratorial minds interested in this truly history defining event. But in my opinion, nothing will ever come close to JFK.
