Natalie Portman's superb acting skills have become a double-edged sword in "The First Lady". On the one hand, the film's acting skills are impeccable, and the director uses a lot of close-up shots. It's about trying to elevate that, but the loose rhythm on the other side, the flat characters, make the movie just a Natalie show.
As a biographical film, "The First Lady" does not start with Jacqueline's equally legendary life trajectory. The film is only based on her as Kennedy's wife, from the first three days of Kennedy's assassination to his assassination. Then to the funeral, through this brief but complex and changeable process, the director is committed to conquering the audience with Natalie's excellent acting skills, a fragile but strong, sad but strong first. The image of a lady is also in line with Oscar's value orientation, but this kind of propositional composition is difficult for people to get much emotional recognition.
Throughout the whole film, the most intuitive image the film gave me was not Natalie Portman's acting responsibility, but the length of the film, the director's excessive reliance on long shots, and even forgot that the narrative is the most important part of the film. The point is that in the nearly two-hour movie, except for the scene where President Kennedy was stabbed, there was almost no dramatic tension in the whole film. Dedicated to proving what an outstanding actress Natalie Portman is, the over-the-top form turns out to be an embarrassing failure of the film.
Through the screen, the first lady under Natalie's acting skills has almost nothing to move people's hearts. Except for her, all the characters including Kennedy in the movie are flat, and even Kennedy is only in the A few strokes in the film are passed by, so the film can't see what the first lady really should reflect, where she is as a wife and a mother, and at the same time, the director Pabu who wants to break the traditional biopic model Ro Larraine, although ingenious in narrative at first glance, the messy time line, the jumping editing, from beginning to end, did not allow the film's emotions to form a real torrent.
"The First Lady" is a work that almost matches all Oscar standards. It has the director's desire to make a new attempt on genre films and the excellent acting skills of Natalie Portman, but the film did not impress in the end. I didn't even have an expression that could make me feel wonderful, too "craftsmanship", so that the film left only an empty craftsmanship.
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