ven though I watch a ton of movies, I only know Jean Seberg from Breathless. I do not remember her from Airport. I am uncertain if I even knew that she was an American. I never really wondered about her until I saw the preview for Seberg multiple times, which made the actor seem intriguing. I am not a Kristen Stewart fan, but I have to admit that she recently starred in a movie that I thoroughly enjoyed, Underwater, and she seemed vibrant and lively in Seberg’s preview. I decided to see the movie in theaters, and when I found out that it was going to leave theaters after a week, I felt a sense of urgency to see it and actually followed through.
Seberg could have been a good movie, but the story needed work. It is not a biopic. It definitely feels as if the writers saw The Lives of Others and wanted a My Week with Marilyn vibe without the consummation so it could simultaneously tackle a lot of issues: government persecution, race, changing socioeconomic/political attitudes of Americans generally and the titular actor. The film reminds me of its depiction of the actor-it wants to help, but has no idea how to do so effectively.
Seberg really wants to be a film that is trying to awaken the conscience of average Americans as embodied by FBI agent Jack Solomon, who is the real protagonist in the film. Jack O’Connell, who does solid work and is best known for starring in Unbroken, plays the agent, but because O’Connell is a chameleon, his career cannot seem to gain traction, and this film won’t be the one to propel his career. Jack is an enthusiastic employee until Seberg starts to wilt under the surveillance, and his work begins to change him.
Seberg is a struggle for the soul of Jack. Will he cosign and align himself with deviants and abusers who uphold a regressive culture that projects their flaws on to others and seek to destroy anything that threatens to hold a mirror up to their shortcomings or will he align himself with the luminous, sincere and earnest Seberg? The movie uses Seberg as a moral Rorschach test for the agents, and the audience. Because the real focus of the film is government’s attitudes towards controlling and destroying its citizens, the filmmakers cynically understand that if the focus of their persecution is a man or a person of color, the audience may be less outraged, but if you make the victim a beautiful, famous, well-intentioned white woman, it will succeed.
Seberg is at its strongest when skewering the men behind the surveillance. They are depicted as the literal government equivalent of men behind the best technical equipment in their parents’ basement like internet trolls. They are equated as stalkers, pervs, rabid fans who get paid to stalk hot women and peep at them. Warning: the little dog dies. The best scene is the worst family dinner ever headed by a patriarch played by Vince Vaughn. (Side note: does Vaughn know that he is playing an awful person? I know that actors play villains as if they are the hero of their own story, but on an objective level, they get it. Does he?) It is a subject worthy of focus, but not if all the marketing makes it seem as if the film is going to be completely different.
How does Seberg reconcile its criticism of a system which it enforces with its narrative style by centering the stories of random, white men instead of its alleged protagonist, a world famous actor? How does it reconcile its criticism of racism and government suppression while tacitly enforcing it by not focusing on stories of people of color who were also the focus of government psychological warfare? If the film was actually a comprehensive biopic of the actor instead of a chronicle of her downfall, then I would have signed a waiver because the actor, not the people of color in her life, would be the point, but she is not. It is a guy who should have just been called John Doe so we could drop the pretense that he is a living, breathing three dimensional person when he is just a placeholder for the average viewer to project their identity on. He works for the FBI, loves sleeping with his wife, finds hot women attractive and enjoys comic books. Why do I care about this guy? What makes him more interesting than literally any other character in this story?
For example, Stephen Root plays Seberg’s straight, white male agent, and in one scene, he keeps talking and does not blink as his client strips in front of him. It is totally normal for him. Seberg’s comfort in her own skin and his unflappable demeanor tells us volumes about their business relationships and their characters. There is nothing sexual in the air, but a level of comfort and regularity with the other. We have intriguing characters who are different from the average person, but we get the Cliff Notes version of their stories. Stewart was glowing and acting, but it is a shame that she was not given more to do. If a woman has been down with the cause since she was fourteen years old, she is a meatier person that the film shows.
It felt as if Seberg’s writers had a few great lines, but had no idea where to put it so abruptly conversations would take an emotional turn that did not make sense in the context of the overall trajectory of characters’ relationships. For a script that was really deft at providing context of Seberg’s contemporaries and the era (if it was a better film, it would make a great marathon to watch after Spike Lee’s Malcolm X and Panther), it seems to lose its rhythm in its desire to delve into the persecution. The initial recreation of notable scenes from Seberg’s career teases that we were going to get more, but it ends up serving the duel purpose of broadly hammering home the intended message regarding persecution and acting as a fan collecting obscure artifacts. It never delves underneath the surface of the actor.
It bugged me that the filmmakers spend two seconds suggesting that her husband is lecherous just to make him the best, long suffering husband ever. It feels as if the filmmakers spend a disproportionate amount of time on her unraveling as opposed to establishing her character on a normal day. On some level, the film seems to cosign her punishment as deserving for being a career woman, a cheater like her husband. In real life, he believed her accusations and never thought that she was crazy, but the film really hits that note hard even though we know it is not true. So why is the movie invested in creating the implication that her loved ones doubted her when they did not? Seberg violated Chekhov’s gun twice. It sets up women as these potentially dangerous figures then deflates it just as quickly. What is the point?
Seberg is a visually sumptuous film. Stewart’s manicurist needs to get an award because those nails were more pivotal than any gun featured in the film. The wardrobe and sets were gorgeous.
Seberg-come for a biopic, don’t stay for the redemption story of some random, fictional FBI agent. The film suggests that Seberg died for Jack’s sins and really did make a difference. Eye roll. This one is only worth watching if you love the cast or the style of the era otherwise don’t expert to get anything of substance.