Chappaquiddick (M). Director: John Curran. Starring: Jason Clarke, Ed Helms, Kate Mara, Bruce Dern. 106 minutes
In a certain light, Chappaquiddick can be viewed as a pair, even an honorary sequel, to Pablo Larraín's excellent 2016 film Jackie. That film about the assassination of John F. Kennedy and its aftermath, from the perspective of Jackie Kennedy, constituted both a critique and a further act of American mythmaking regarding that most mythologised of 20th century American families.
Chappaquiddick on the other hand scrutinises the implications and consequences of such mythmaking. It is an account of the event that on 18 July 1969 ended the life of former Robert Kennedy staffer Mary Jo Kopechne, when a car driven by Senator Ted Kennedy drove off a bridge into a lake on Chappaquiddick Island. Kennedy left the scene of the accident and did not notify authorities for ten hours.
The facts of the incident remain contested; at the time Kennedy received a two-month suspended jail sentence after pleading guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of a crash causing personal injury. Despite the tragedy of Kopechne's death and the attendant media scandal, Kennedy of course barely faltered, as he went on to become the fourth-longest continuously serving senator in US history.
Chappaquiddick weaves established facts, accepted truths and poetic license into a political fable that's both thoughtful and iconoclastic. It sets the incident against the backdrop of the Apollo 11 moon landing, the triumphant realisation of the late JFK's space race posturing. Following Bobby's death the previous year, Ted (Clarke), the last surviving bother, has been left with a hell of a legacy to maintain.
As a force in Ted's life these expectations are given personal embodiment in the aging Joseph P. Kennedy Sr (Dern), who is able to wither his youngest son with a mute glare from the seat of his wheelchair. In the aftermath of the accident, Ted's craving for fatherly approval proves a more potent influence than the voice of conscience represented by his cousin and confidante, Joseph Gargan (Helms).
The film appreciates the effects of these public and family expectations on Ted's actions, without ever really sympathising with him. 'I'm not going to be president,' he murmurs, by way of announcing Kopechne's death to Gargan. Ultimately, he comes off as more pathetic than Machiavellian, the future Liberal Lion inept in his attempts to spin the situation, and rarely having the courage of his convictions.
"We are never allowed to forget