Hi everyone!
We’re taking another week off from Takeover Tuesday, but we’ll be back the next three weeks with another review from Andrew Campbell, a review from a 2017 #DLMChallenge alumnus, and a review from a fellow movie review podcast, who was bullied by last week’s contributor into participating. Well, I may have posted a GIF or two as well. If you want to see what all the fuss is about, head over to onemoviepunch.com/takeover-tuesday and give it a look, and reach out to me if you want to get involved. We also have another little project in the works, which I’m not quite ready to spill the beans about, but don’t worry. I promise I’ll present it when the time has come.
And now...
Today’s movie is “Chappaquiddick” (2018), the Entertainment Studios production directed by John Curran and written for the screen by Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan. The film follows the infamous car crash involving Senator Ted Kennedy (Jason Clarke), which resulted in the death of political strategist Mary Jo Kopechne (Kate Mara), and changed the direction of Senator Kennedy’s career.
Spoilers ahead.
I’ve been accused more than once for having a left-leaning bias, and surely the documentary selections this past year have confirmed that. So, the news really hasn’t been great for progressive politics the past few days. However, I’m not a supporter of either major political party, and I would say that what defines us as people is less by our political affiliation, and more by whatever privilege we might have in society. A popular slogan from the last decade has been “We are the 99%”, which looks at the immense wealth disparity in society, and, most importantly for this review, the different sets of rules the privileged receive as opposed to the rest of us. Nothing defines wealth and social privilege quite like the Chappaquiddick Incident, when a sitting senator is responsible for the death of someone due to drunken negligence, and instead of being in jail, he gets expedited legal treatment, an investigation limited in scope, and a giant team of lawyers and public relations experts to defend him. Gee, sound like any newly appointed Supreme Court justice you might know?
The privileged disparity in treatment is front and center in “Chappaquiddick”. Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan, in their debut feature-length screenplay, really do a great job composing the story from the primary and secondary sources of the time. John Curran takes the extra step of beautifully developing the story, setting an excellent tone at the beginning, then carrying us through the events as they happened, but also showing us how the events were described by Kennedy at various steps in the process. However, I would say this film is also equally about Ted Kennedy as a person, and his complex familial relationship, and the weird convergence with the moon landing, leaving a tangle of Kennedy legacy and present, and the rough relationship between Ted and his father, Joe. I started wondering why I would bother watching a film about a terrible and avoidable accident, and ended gaining a lot of insight into the Kennedys as a whole, and not always in a flattering light. It also serves as the beginning of a form of politics that understands the use of media to sway public opinion.
I was a huge fan of the cast. Ed Helms as Joe Gargan and Jim Gaffigan as Paul Markham, both fixers/aides to Kennedy, were great, and demonstrated the much larger range of both actors. Bruce Dern as Joe Kennedy, Sr. conveys so much emotion given the limited physical condition of the character. Clancy Brown is almost unrecognizable as Robert McNamara. I wish Kate Mara had more screen time and backstory for Mary Jo Kopechne. But Jason Clarke really shines as Ted Kennedy, an Oscar-worthy performance, keeping enough of the accent to feel real, and walking us through the political and privileged calculus that kept Ted Kennedy in office for years when he should have been rotting in a cell. Add on top of that the iconic locations and period-perfect costumes, and you have yourself an incredibly well-made film.
“Chappaquiddick” (2018) is a historical drama surrounding one of the more notable political scandals of the Kennedy family, examining not just their privileged family, but the different sets of rules the privileged are allowed to live by. It serves as a powerful film not just for the period in which it is told, but also thematically for the ever-widening gap between the privileged and the rest of us within the country. Fans of political dramas, or folks who want to know where all the bad Ted Kennedy drinking jokes came from, should definitely check out this film. I suspect it may receive a few nominations next year.
Rotten Tomatoes: 81% (FRESH)
Metacritic: 67
One Movie Punch: 9.4/10
“Chappaquiddick” (2018) is rated PG-13 and is currently streaming on Netflix.
