Portman a triumph as former first lady in insightful 'Jackie'

"Jackie" opens with an assassination attempt.

Not by Lee Harvey Oswald or Jack Ruby.

By Mica Levi's overbearing score that batters its way into the drama, dominating the scenes and bullying our emotions into submission.

Even before we see Natalie Portman's first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, appearing lost and shellshocked soon after the 1963 assassination of her husband, President John F. Kennedy, Levi's intrusive music has already undermined the visuals with wilting, dissonant strings suggesting a demented, psychological horror film.

Certainly, Pablo Larrain's insightful study of how the first lady conducted herself following the assassination qualifies as psychological horror, but not the cheesy, nightmarish sort suggested by Levi's disruptive, often surrealistic musical elements.

"Jackie" opens with the first lady sitting down with an unnamed journalist (Billy Crudup, a surrogate for a real Life magazine writer) to talk about her firsthand account of what happened Nov. 22 in Dallas.

Early on, Jackie Kennedy - a former journalist herself - makes it clear that she's shaping her husband's legacy, not attempting to set records straight with truth and accuracy.

"Don't think for one minute I'm going to let you publish that!" Jackie asserts after telling the journalist her impressions of the moment when bullets hit the President (Caspar Phillipson, who nails the JFK look and persona), blowing his head open and splattering her pink pillbox hat and matching suit with blood.

"Also, I don't smoke," Jackie says, lighting up one of many, many cigarettes.

This chat with the journalist seems like an afterthought in Noah Oppenheim's otherwise keenly detailed screenplay, an unnecessary framing device that takes too long to set up the real story, which only kicks in when a series of telling flashbacks shows us a picture of the first lady as an alone public figure and mother struggling to deal with her loss in a world full of powerful men - among them John Carroll Lynch's Lyndon B. Johnson - now trying to dictate what she should do.

"Take the kids and disappear!" adviser Bill Walton (Richard E. Grant) says. She does not.

Jackie also doesn't listen to Lady Bird Johnson (Beth Grant) when she advises her to change her blood-splattered suit before a news conference in Dallas.

"There were wanted posters everywhere with Jack's face on them," Jackie flatly replies. "Let them see what they have done."

Portman's complex, constantly evolving portrait of the first lady is a transcendent piece of acting. She captures Jackie's whispery delivery - as if her lungs couldn't quite push enough air through her vocal chords - without allowing it to dominate the character. She suggests understandable shock following the shooting, uttering incoherent thoughts and sparring with her brother-in-law Robert Kennedy (a woefully miscast Peter Sarsgaard, whose dead-eyed performance fails to capture RFK's accent or physical charisma).

The first lady receives key support from two people, her loyal staffer Nancy Tuckerman (Greta Gerwig) and a priest (John Hurt), who gives her unconventionally blunt answers to her questions of faith.

"Jackie" is a triumph of production design, period costuming and vintage cars and props, all captured by Stephane Fontaine's formal camera lens in a mix of sharply defining close-ups and scenes constructed of Kubrickian symmetry.

A few times, Jackie's wandering around the austere White House alone at night vaguely suggests Alfred Hitchcock as filtered through Brian DePalma.

Here, Levi's score would feel quite at home.

“Jackie”

★ ★ ★

Starring: Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup, John Hurt

Directed by: Pablo Larrain

Other: A Fox Searchlight Pictures release. At the Century Centre and River East 21 in Chicago, plus the Evanston Century. Rated R for language, violence. 95 minutes