Chappaquiddick depicts the events of July 18, 1969, which was the fateful day that Mary Jo Kopechne died, then the following week from the perspective of those closest to the controversy with a special, though not exclusive, focus on Ted Kennedy, whom Jason Clarke embodies completely. According to the film, unbelievably, it only took a week after her death for a judge to sentence Kennedy to probation.
Chappaquiddick is a film that starts off strong then dramatically loses momentum as the aftermath unfolds. I never planned to see it in theaters because fair or not, who wants to see a movie about Ted Kennedy. He was a great legislator, but even Carrie Fisher’s account of an interaction with him made him seem like a cruel bastard. I was warned by others to wait until it was available for home viewing, which I actually think improves the experience because you can rewind and use closed captioning when events get murky.
Chappaquiddick’s timeless lesson is that it does not matter if you were a woman respected for your expertise and devotion to your work, once you die, you become a problem to be disposed and an interchangeable, anonymous girl, not an individual human being who deserves respect. Kate Mara gives a brief, sober and grounding performance that diminishes any ability for a viewer grounded in respectability politics to dismiss her. Actually the film uses our prurient assumptions about the Boiler Room Girls, then implicitly rebukes us with innocent scenes of normal people at an off site work party. It is practically anticlimactic in its understated cheer. You see more drunks on the T after a Red Sox game. Still one minute, they are calling you family, then the next minute, they treat you like garbage. Mary Jo’s fellow Boiler Room Girls fall over themselves to save Kennedy instead of show a second of concern for their friend. I better not have any friends like them!
Chappaquiddick does not attempt to explain how Kennedy got out of the car, but does depict him as driving and Mary Jo calling for him after the crash. The filmmakers are very lukewarm as opposed to objective. They use their imagination to show us Mary Jo’s final moments, but not to create a plausible explanation for how Kennedy escaped. Well, I did. When the car hit the water, Mary Jo could not have been unconscious if she did not drown and was able to hold herself above water for hours until she ran out of oxygen. She was a strong woman. If that door ever opened, and she was not unconscious, she would have had the presence of mind to get out, and she would have followed Kennedy out of the car. If the account is true that the door could not be opened, then he could not have been inside the car when it crashed, and he lied about driving. No one escapes a car, turns around and closes the door during a crash; however if he was inside and closed the door, it was a deliberate, conscious act. The alternative is a freak accident that he got out, and as the car sunk further, it closed, which seems unlikely since the water wasn’t that deep so there was not a whole lot of sinking going on. Only God and some dead people know. In their attempt to be taken seriously and avoid sounding like Tony Curtis in Hollywood Babylon by speculating, the filmmakers ultimately fall short of an episode of Unsolved Mysteries and are mundane. Don’t choose a sensational subject matter for your movie then pull punches.
I like Ed Helms. He does a great job as the manipulated cousin and/or (adopted) brother, but because I am used to seeing him in comedic roles, his voice of moral authority takes a back seat to me imagining Chappaquiddick as a dramatic mash up of The Hangover and Very Bad Things. While the rough housing scene and familiarity are necessary to lighten the overall mood, it is dissonant with the overall mood. The final scenes with Clarke and Helms feels like the magnificent bastard moment when Kennedy gets Joe to become complicit and vicariously guilty and seems to get a bit of a thrill for making him hold his cue cards when he knows that Joe disagrees. Also Ann, the woman who is caring for Joe Kennedy, the patriarch, is his wife, but they have no scenes together so I never get a sense of their contextual identity in the family. You would never know it by watching the movie.
My favorite part of Chappaquiddick is when Kennedy comes home. Bruce Dern is a beast. Up to that point, Clarke is killing it as Kennedy, but Dern just swoops in and steals the spotlight while saying very little as his father, Joe Kennedy. His acting presence is the equivalent of a real life Darth Vader except more savage as he withholds even an iota of approval or sympathy. I found myself thinking that Ted just needs to stop going to his father to get kicked in the teeth. Also the home war room scenes are brilliantly comedic. During the first half of the movie, Ted is the big man in the room, but when he comes home, a roomful of men just roast him and treat him like he is an idiot.
Chappaquiddick makes the point that the war room’s strategy was less an effective conspiracy than a fumbling, lucky series of maneuvers that worked in spite of numerous missteps because of coincidental bigger events. I have no idea how a viewer without the benefit of closed captioning would be able to tell who the players are in the scenes intercut with the strategy sessions that represent how their strategy unfolded in real time. I actually think those scenes are great, but because there are so many different people talking, and some of the people depicted are people getting direction from people only named in the war room, but never seen, the movie must have been confusing for viewers in theaters. For example, they mention having a guy named Smith treach out and get a favorable DA with no connection to the Kennedys. We never see Smith, but we hear him on the phone talking to a guy named Walter, who gets assigned to the case. How do we know who is on the phone? Sure a viewer can probably infer the connection if they aren’t too focused on the names. I enjoyed the way that Chappaquiddick recreates and shows scenes that are slightly different from the beginning during the final speech to compare and contrast the lies from the truth. This movie succeeds at breaking down the mechanics of truth and representation, but ultimately lacks imagination at the turning point in the controversy. For those interested in the Kennedys or a fan of the cast, this movie is a must see, but be prepared to mentally check out before the actual movie ends.
