Secrets and Lies: Looking Back at the Movie 'The Assassination of Kennedy'
He Yunchao
"Love for the motherland is a beautiful feeling, but there is a better feeling than this, and that is the love of truth! Believe me, I love my country more than any of you, and I wish her glory... ... However, I didn't learn to love my motherland with my eyes closed and my mouth closed. I found that only when a person has a clear understanding of his motherland can he become a person who is beneficial to the motherland."
- Chadayev, "A Madman's Defence"
"Killing Kennedy"
Director: Oliver Stone
Actors: Kevin Costner, Tommy Lee Jones, Gary Oldman, Ceci Spacek, Jack Lemmon, Joe Pesci, Kevin Bacon, Donald Sutherland
Genre: Mystery, Political, Thriller
Length: 206 minutes
About the secret:
At present, there are many opinions that "Assassination of Kennedy" can be regarded as a semi-documentary work. The film starts with a hodgepodge of documentaries that lasts about 10 minutes (in fact, some segments are specially shot and then made into a documentary style), background music Full of American spirit. The black and white part is the resignation speech of the previous president, Eisenhower, connecting with John Fitzgerald Kennedy's succession as president, and his famous inaugural speech "The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans". Here is a detail revealed, Kennedy was elected with the smallest margin of vote in history. Also, Kennedy's policy after taking office changed the previous practice, which is to change the policy of Eisenhower, a military man with outstanding achievements. Later we realized that this was a foreshadowing, and then the picture changed, a woman was thrown on the side of the road, screaming: They are going to kill him! Along with the music, the camera changes into intense drum beats, and the screen switches very quickly, some even less than a second, constantly increasing the tension. On November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was parading in the southern city of Dallas, when gunshots sounded at 12:30 noon, and the picture went dark - meaning it was the darkest moment in American history.
Afterwards, the storyline of the film unfolds, and New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison gets the news in his office. There were different opinions in the bar. There were two old men whispering, and some people thought the president should die. The two old men went back to their residence and continued to quarrel.
Soon, it was suddenly announced on TV that the police had caught a suspect-Lee Harvey Oswald: While searching the warehouse on the sixth floor of the Texas Textbook Building, they found an Italian-made rifle. The owner of the gun was Oswald. swald. Two days later, club owner Ruby (one of the two older men in front) shot Oswald at the Dallas Municipal Prison. A series of sudden accidents, resulting in confusion and tension, tightly clasped our eyes and nerves.
Jim Garrison listened to the report of the special committee headed by Justice Warren of the Washington Supreme Court—an investigative report of 300,000 words (26 volumes with photographs, charts, witness statements, and other documents totaling an estimated 100 words) 10,000 characters), I think there are too many doubts. The main conclusions of the report are the following:
1. The bullet that killed President Kennedy and seriously wounded Governor Connery was fired by Lee Harvey Oswald. Three bullets were fired from a sixth-floor window in the south corner of the Texas Textbook Building.
2. Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed a patrol officer 45 minutes after shooting the president.
3. Lee Harvey Oswald and Ruby are not involved in any assassination organizations at home and abroad, and there is no connection between the two of them.
4. There is no evidence of conspiracy or disloyalty by federal, state or local officials against the United States government.
5. Lee Harvey Oswald's criminal motive was his hatred of all authority and his manifested belief in Marxism and Communism.
Jim and his assistants came to the conclusion that the report was absurd through field surveys and shooting simulations. Jim gradually felt that the seriousness of the incident was not just the assassination of the president, but that there was a greater darkness behind the assassination: he deduced that Oswald was a spy, his dealings with the Cuban exile gang, and the consortium businessman Ke Lai Xiao has an affair, and I feel that it is all the unstable factors of this so-called democratic society. These may only be superficial. The most turbulent undercurrent is Lyndon Johnson's plan on the plane before he was ready to take office as the 36th president—— He boldly declared to his supporters: "Please choose me, and I will bring you war!"
Jim investigates Gary Oldman's Oswald, Tommy Lee Jones' Clay Shaw, exile Joe Pesci, gay Kevin Bacon, and more. When I thought that the clues were gradually clarified, I was actually involved in a deeper mystery. And, his family has been hit by a case that seems to have nothing to do with him, and the character's personality is accentuated by Sissy Spacek's wife arguing with Jim. Jim once vented his emotions to his wife: "Damn it, I've been sleeping for three years! I don't want my children to live in lies!" Not only family issues, but also funding issues, personnel issues, behind a series of issues, there are deep The question of the level of moral stance, because gradually unraveling the truth is what put him on the opposite side of the government! His insistence on an independent investigation into the Kennedy assassination has also become a national news event.
Just as Jim was in a state of confusion, a rare moment of tranquility appeared in Washington. Jim seemed touched when he saw a father and son come to pay their respects in front of the ever-opening fire at President Kennedy's cemetery. Anonymous, played by Donald Sutherland, appears as he ascends the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The conversation between the two also lasted for several minutes, which is the key to the film's connection, and it is also the core part of the argument that reveals the film's point of view.
The anonymous man, calling himself Mr. X, told Jim: "You're the only one who is close to the truth. I can't tell you who killed the president or name anyone about the incident, but I can say some facts. , the results are up to you to judge." Then, this conversation was interspersed with almost all black and white documentary footage, in fact, many scenes involving the film's viewpoints were specially shot clips. What Mr. X said was all about the classified actions of the military leaders, and the impact of the policies that Kennedy implemented on the leaders after he took office, the predicament the military faced, and many complaints from the top. There are also subtle signs found before and after Kennedy's assassination after he was exiled, and the military action color of this case. Mr. X said some doubts that made Jim stunned-basically ruled out the possibility that this was an ordinary assassination case.
Jim returned to the office with some contradictions in his heart. When faced with questions from his assistants and when everyone was overwhelmed—his fighting spirit was reignited: he also stated the same point of view as Mr. X: a group of gangsters can’t change the president at all It is impossible to remove the guards who should be there in advance, it is impossible to have open windows on the street, it is impossible for the onlookers to approach casually without order, and it is even more impossible to drive Deliberately slowing down the president's car to give the enemy an opportunity... Everything revealed the earth-shattering secret of this case, who has the best chance to assassinate Kennedy? Who gets the most benefit from it?
Jim's aide thought he was crazy because he actually said something like "It's a coup." Jim didn't back down from the pressure, his daughter was almost cheated, and he even nearly had an accident in the airport bathroom, witness Joe Pai West died at home, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were shot to death on television, and the country suffered an unprecedented "Phantom Crisis".
About lies:
Some film critics said that if the director filmed "Assassination of Kennedy" in the 1970s, he would be dead on the street on the day the first shot was completed (relevant information shows that in the 20 years from 1963 to 1983, it was related to the assassination of President Kennedy. of witnesses killed as many as 188).
With its gorgeous graphics and brilliant editing, the film has been hailed as unrepeatable -- even "the best montage experiment since "Breakout." Some people say that the statement of "Assassination of Kennedy" feels at least 50% more believable. The US official lie about the assassination, in the last 20 minutes of the film, was debunked by Jim Garrison's reasoning and accusations in court one by one. Jim's courage and efforts to investigate the case and pursue the truth made this film eventually surpass the general suspense reasoning. s frame.
In fact, it is not that Jim Garrison blindly provoked the provocation against the government in exchange for the so-called social attention, as revealed by the end subtitles of the film, a kind of effort to the truth and the pursuit of truth, this uncharacteristic patriotism Released to the heights of true greatness - against the current government - Jim is a true warrior! This is also the core meaning of the American "Declaration of Independence", which is the highest level of the main theme of the United States.
However, for the historical mystery of Kennedy's assassination, Jim's judgment that there are three ambush points in the film should be a personal opinion. The claim that the fatal shot was fired from behind the fence in front of the convoy, all the witnesses are almost dead (or will have to wait until the declassified files are released in 2038). The most fundamental conspiracy theory that Jim believes is that Lyndon Johnson, CIA, FBI, and gangsters are jointly involved - the film uses a lot of information to describe the change of the president's driving route, the strict organization of the killer, the arrangement of scapegoats, and the dissection of the president's corpse. The group, relevant media reports, and the question of who benefits in the end to explain this is a "coup"... Almost every reason is enough to produce murder, and the compound argument of the film's statement sends everyone to the invisible dock. Personally, the doubt about this statement is that, if you want to believe that the assassination of the president deduced in the film is a military secret operation planned by the military that Mr. X led Jim to state, obviously the fewer people who know the better, but, as in the film It seems a bit unreasonable that the military giants have sat down several times to discuss, and there are so many departments involved, and there are many people who are the three religions and nine first-rate people in the society. But this is only the imperfection of cleaning up the film's conspiracy theories, and most Americans now believe that the so-called Warren report does not reflect the truth of the incident.
The film conveyed Kennedy's desire to end the Cold War when he came to power. However, in the context of the Cold War in which the United States and the Soviet Union were competing for hegemony and China publicly supported the communist countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, Kennedy, under the banner of a peace strategy, took advantage of the changes in Sino-Soviet relations and joined forces with the Soviet Union. The major events of Khrushchev's easing and resolving the Cuban missile crisis are basically true. At the same time, under the background of China's support for Ho Chi Minh in North Vietnam (this is a hidden background of the US actively launching the Vietnam War, which we have been neglecting at present), the Kennedy administration made it clear that it was China that caused the instability in Asia, so the US was in a relationship with the Soviet Union. After the easing of relations, Rushchev attempted to unite the Soviet Union to contain China. For 20 years before and after the Vietnam War, it is basically conjecture that Kennedy will end the Vietnam War early, and the credibility is not high. It is a well-recognized fact that Kennedy sent a special force to Vietnam in May 1961 shortly after he came to power to support Ngo Dinh Diem against Ho Chi Minh. This was a clear signal that the US military officially entered the Vietnam War.
Of course, when Eisenhower was in power before, the United States had fully supported Ngo Dinh Diem's South Vietnam, and the local military crisis had already erupted. In his January 1961 State of the Union address just after taking office, Kennedy said: "In Asia, where the relentless pressure of Chinese communism threatens security from the borders of India and Vietnam to the jungles of Laos, the United States also tends to believe that The armed struggle in Vietnam is linked to China, who believes that China is the mastermind behind the scenes, and China poses the greatest threat to the United States in Vietnam.” Of course, it is a deliberate exaggeration to say that the mastermind behind the scenes is a deliberate exaggeration, but after the new China, due to Ho Chi Minh’s request to go to China on foot, Indeed, a team of military advisers was dispatched. This is the force composed of Chen Geng, Wei Guoqing and others to assist the Vietnamese people, and provided a lot of equipment and artillery weapons. Therefore, the victory of Dien Bien Phu caused a great shock to the Western world. Therefore, Eisenhower's military assistance to South Vietnam was directly prompted, and at the same time, Vietnam was divided into two parts: the north and the south. At the same time, behind the resolution of the Cuban crisis, China was critical of the Soviet Union's compromise; the Sino-Indian border conflict in 1962 made Kennedy continue to have an unfriendly attitude toward China until he ordered the official dispatch of troops. The claim that Vietnam ends the war and withdraws troops is basically an unfounded "fantasy". It is precisely because of Kennedy's attitude towards China that Nixon's visit to China has the influence of moving the world from confrontation to friendship. Although Nixon's handling of the US domestic and Vietnam wars was a mess, his historical achievements in the reconciliation of Sino-US relations cannot be denied. Precisely in 1995, Oliver Stone asked Anthony Hopkins to perform a "Nixon" to reflect on this period of history, but he was preconceived and regarded Nixon's handling of China as a "crisis public relations" style slippery. Some basis, but after all, there is no objective treatment of Nixon, which is completely different from the emotional stance of "Assassination of Kennedy."
The rich emotion and subjectivity of Oliver Stone's films is sometimes a charm, which has been the case since "Field Platoon", and in "Kennedy Assassination", it is a force to support the plot and shape the characters. "Such national security, if it smells like this, looks like this and feels like this, you can call it fascism." "Treachery never succeeds because once it does, no one dares to call it treason. "Kevin Costner in 1991, with the huge halo of "Dances with Wolves" on his head, in this film, he contributed the most wonderful performance of his life, and his role as Jim Garrison is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. On the whole, the characters he interprets are calm and low-key, and he does not have an overly exaggerated and emotional image, whether it is "The Unselfish", "Dancing With Wolves" or "Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves" and "The Bodyguard". The last 10-minute speech can be said to be an immortal and wonderful passage in the history of film. The audience can appreciate his slightly choked emotion, but the sense of proportion is rare. Compared with the domestic classic dubbing, it just tries to show uprightness and dignity and fearlessness. Although the translation is impeccable, the release of emotions seems to be slightly inferior. The last sentence "Don't forget the dead king" still shakes our hearts after so many years.
Kevin Costner is a dazzling talent in "Dancing With Wolves", where he directed and starred, and even beat Martin Scorsese's "Goodfellas." Jim Garrison, it feels completely different. He is entangled in all kinds of emotional contradictions, but although he has been irritable and emotional, the character as a whole is deep and reserved - because he is a calm investigation. The role of the case is memorable. Although it can be said that he had a similar shape of a law enforcer in Brian De Palma's "Unselfish", but after all, that film did not rise to such a sharp point of view of life, world view and values. Politics, morality and truth in such extreme situations, no film is as strong as "Kennedy Assassination", but also clearly expresses an aesthetic force. Although Kevin Costner, after the box-office disaster caused by "Waterworld", has no good movies except for a few small expenses. However, it does not prevent him from becoming an inescapable name in film history. "Dances with Wolves" and "Assassination of Kennedy" are already coordinates.
In addition to Kevin Costner, Tommy Lee Jones, Gary Oldman, Ceci Spacek, Jack Lemmon, Joe Pesci, Kevin Bacon, Donald Suther Lan has a long list of well-known names. It is said that some actors come purely because of their fame, and they are completely friendly cameos, because with such a budget, it is impossible to invite so many excellent actors. In the future, there will never be a film that can gather so many acting masters to play together on the same stage. This is an impossible lineup.
The emotional rendering provided by this film, the perfect image, and the combination of performance, editing, and viewpoint have brought the comprehensive value to an unprecedented height. The film has elevated a reasoning and suspenseful story to the extreme - established through anti-government speeches A patriotic spirit that goes beyond patriotism to express the love of truth! That's where The Assassination of Kennedy is truly great! The so-called American spirit has been surpassed, this is the creation of aesthetics!
Jim Garrison in the movie is qualified to be a forever icon. What matters is not what the truth of the matter is, but what action is taken to reveal the truth and realize the belief. In other words, do we still have the courage to tell the truth - "Such a country must not be the country I was born in, and it must not be the country I want to live with for the rest of my life."
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