Plenty has been said about the lives and legacies of the Kennedys. From Jack’s exploits in PT-109, Thirteen Days, and even JFK, to Bobby’s life and death in Thirteen Days, RFK, and Bobby, to Jackie‘s portrayal of the first lady’s tumultuous time following the death of her husband, we’ve seen plenty. But little screentime has been devoted to Teddy, the youngest of the Kennedy brothers and the only one to see the current millennium. It’s almost fitting, what with the curse believed to have hung over the family, that Teddy’s first major spotlighting film (the film finishing the Entertainment Studios trifecta, alongside Hostiles and The Hurricane Heist) would focus on the incident at Chappaquiddick.
For the uninitiated: On the night of Friday, July 19, 1969, Senator Ted Kennedy was driving with a former aide from Bobby’s presidential campaign the year prior on Chappaquiddick Island in southeastern Massachusetts. Possibly drunk from partying, Kennedy accidentally drove the car off a narrow bridge and into a channel of water, the car winding up upside-down. Though Kennedy was able to escape, his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned while trapped in the car. Kennedy fled the scene, reporting the accident several hours later. A scandal ensued, mostly surrounding Kennedy’s level of guilty negligence; he pleaded guilty to leaving the scene and had his two-month jail sentence suspended. Though that was the extent of his direct punishment, the scandal forever clouded his political future, precluding a presidential run in 1972 and 1976 (and possibly contributed to his not receiving the Democratic nomination in 1980), though not halting his extensive senatorial career.
This whole spectacle is the focus of the plot of Chappaquiddick, giving us a possible ground-level view of the political maneuverings involved in dealing with Kennedy’s accident. We see what may have gone down the night of the accident, the involvement of several key members of the Kennedy political entourage (including the likes of Ted Sorenson, adviser and speechwriter for JFK, and Robert McNamara, Jack’s Secretary of Defense) as well as family members (especially Kennedy patriarch Joseph and cousin Joe Gargan), and the media circus that culminated in a televised speech presented by the three major networks of the time.
Jason Clarke does an able job as Teddy, constantly having the audience oscillate between sympathy and derision, though his accent wavers throughout. (I mean, I normally wouldn’t bring it up, but everyone does a Kennedy accent, including co-star Ed Helms, you’d think an Oscar-nominated actor would be able to pull it off, right?) Helms works hard to shed his usual comedic schtick as Gargan, pulling off the put-upon idealism of the character with admirable skill, and helping fellow funnyman Jim Gaffigan along the same road as friend of the family (and US Attorney for Massachusetts) Paul Markham. Some interesting jobs are done in the smaller roles, including Kate Mara as the deceased Ms. Kopechne, Olivia Thirlby as fellow “Boiler Room Girl” Rachel Schiff, and Clancy Brown as a strangely imposing McNamara, but it’s Bruce Dern that shines as Joe Kennedy, confined to a wheelchair due to a stroke and an accompanying bout of aphasia yet still possessing the stern coldness of a man disapproving of his son’s actions. He’s seriously harsh in this role and endlessly enjoyable.
Director John Curran (most known to me from The Painted Veil) and writers Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan frame Teddy’s actions as malingering in the shadows of his more illustrious martyred brothers, and they take an interesting tack with this. Occurring at the very same time as the Chappaquiddick incident was the Apollo 11 moon landing, Armstrong setting foot on the lunar surface the day after the accident. Appropriately, the moon features prominently in Maryse Alberti’s photography (you may remember her work from Creed, The Wrestler, and Freeheld, among others), a reminder of Jack’s most enduring legacy constantly looking down on Teddy’s mistakes. It’s clear the film is critical of Kennedy and his handling of the incident, but it’s no hatchet job: the critical tone is interwoven with a strong sense of sympathy for a man desperate to escape his family’s long shadow and clearly in over his head with his personal missteps. The idea of going on to work toward a greater cause is balanced with the desire for justice for a deceased young woman and the irresponsible man who ended her life.
It may not be the perfect view of the incident and Teddy’s character overall, but the film is decidedly compelling and fascinating, even merely from the perspective of rubbernecking the scene of a wreck. It’s worth a go if the subject matter stirs interest and the idea of tense political maneuvering does it for you. If not, I’d say it’s a soft pass, if not a future rental sometime down the road. There’s plenty to like here, and it’s especially pleasing to see a film approach such a harsh historical subject with a measure of balance and nuance, while still getting across a message promoting integrity and hope.
Allusions of Grandeur 