A "duel of the elderly" is destined to be staged in November this year: the results of the party primaries in the US election have been announced, and with Nikki Haley's exit, the situation of Biden vs. Trump has become clear.
In addition to the Democratic and Republican parties, one name stands out in the list of candidates for the Independent and Third parties: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
In September 2023, Robert Jr. announced his candidacy for president as a non-partisan
That's right, he is the son of former US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of former US President John F. Kennedy.
You must know that the Kennedy family is a family of Democrats, but this old urchin has gone off the rails: a vaccine skeptic, close to far-right politicians, and running as a "spoiler".
As one of the most mysterious and influential political families in American history, the Kennedy family has fallen from "power" to "spoiler", and it seems that it cannot escape the "death curse" hanging over the family.
His father, Robert, was the first presidential candidate to be assassinated during a campaign campaign, and his uncle John died in one of the most publicized assassinations in history, the JFK assassination.
In an interview last year, Robert Jr. pointed the finger at the CIA, asserting: "The CIA was involved in the JFK assassination and concealed it for 60 years." ”
Many directors in film history have tried to restore the "truth" of JFK's assassination, David Miller and "Roman Holiday" screenwriter Dalton Trumbert, "The Great Assassination Conspiracy" in 1973 pointed the finger at industry and intelligence services, Chilean director Pablo Larain cut through the perspective of "The First Lady", focusing on the secret history of Jacqueline, and Peter Landesman focused on showing the life inside and outside Dallas's "Parkland Hospital" after the assassination of the president.
But when it comes to the one that has had the most profound impact on the American people and the investigative process, Oliver Stone's "The Assassination of JFK" must not be missed.
The film is adapted from the true experience of U.S. District Attorney Jim Garrison "The Assassin's Trail", which won $250 million at the box office that year, won the Oscars for "Best Cinematography" and "Best Editing", and scored 8.8 on Douban, better than 97% of historical and suspense films.
"Assassination of JFK" Phoenix TV movie channel
Coming soon on April 28 at 21:15
Oliver Stone's casting abilities are impressive. Looking back on these three and a half hours now, a total of seven Oscar winners participated: the leading actor Kevin Costner won seven Oscars for his self-directed and starred western "Dances with Wolves".
Stills from "Dances with Wolves".
Gary Oldman, the "perverted policeman" in "This Killer Is Not Too Cold", plays Oswald, the murderer of Kennedy, in the film. It is said that Oliver Stone's decision was made by Gary Oldman's "neurotic" performance style.
Oswald on the left and Gary Oldman on the right
There are also actresses such as Sissi Spicek and Jack Lemmon, as well as "Best Supporting Actors": Joe Pesci, a "gangster professional" who starred in "Once Upon a Time in America" and "Goodfellas", and Tommy Lee Jones, who won the Olympics with "Lincoln", etc., the lineup is remarkable.
Past
On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, traveled in an open-top car in Texas to promote re-election for the next year's general election.
At 12:30 p.m., as I passed Dallas' Dealey Plaza, gunshots rang out.
Source: Phoenix.com
There were three shots, and Kennedy was shot twice — one in the back of the neck and a fatal second in the back of the head.
Source: Phoenix.com
Cuban-American Lee Harvey Oswald, arrested by the CIA within two hours, is accused of carrying out the assassination alone from the sixth floor of the Texas Textbook Warehouse Building, using a Carcano M91/38 manual rifle.
Source: Phoenix.com
Two days later, while moving from the city jail to the county jail, Oswald was shot and killed by nightclub owner Jack Ruby, all on live television.
Jack Ruby gave the reason for the assassination to avenge Kennedy, and the media unearthed that he was inextricably linked to the mafia and the anti-Castro Cuban criminal gang.
Source: Phoenix.com
Before he died, Oswald left only one sentence: "I am a scapegoat." ”
Source: Phoenix.com
After a 10-month investigation, the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of the president, issued the Warren Report in September 1964, which named Oswald as the sole murderer.
The members of the "Warren Committee" include US Chief Justice Warren, former CIA Director Alan Dulles, congressmen and bank chairmen.
Alan Dulles was director of the CIA during Eisenhower's tenure, but was fired by Kennedy because of the Bay of Pigs incident in 1991.
Background to the Bay of Pigs incident
1
On April 17, 1961, Cubans in exile in the United States, with the assistance of the Central Intelligence Agency, launched an invasion against the Cuban Revolutionary Government led by Castro in the Bay of Pigs on the southwest coast of Cuba.
2
In less than 72 hours, Cuban forces crushed the group of exiles and used them as hostages to demand 62 million pesos of medicine and baby food from the United States, due to a miscalculation of the landing site by CIA experts, the cancellation of the air strikes by Kennedy, and the lack of cooperation from the opposition. It was also the first time that the United States had paid war reparations.
3
Kennedy publicly assumed responsibility, but news came out that Kennedy was privately disappointed with the CIA, and the Bay of Pigs incident became one of the triggers for the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The Warren Commission found that Oswald alone fired three shots, three bullets hitting seven wounds, which is also known as the "magic bullet theory": the first shot missed, the second shot went through Kennedy's back and throat, then Texas Governor John Connery's armpit and arm, into the left leg, and the third bullet hit Kennedy in the head.
A still from "The Assassination of JFK".
However, this reason did not convince the broad masses of the people. Normally, the first shot is usually the most accurate when a gunner snipes, but Kennedy's fatal wound came from the third shot.
The probability of forming seven holes in one shot was also verified by later generations in a game called "Assassination Kennedy Reloaded" - it is difficult to restore seven holes in one shot.
What is even more bizarre is that in the three years since the case, 18 witnesses, including Jack Ruby, have passed away one after another. Between 1963 and 1993, more than 100 witnesses died by suicide or murder, and Johnson, succeeding Kennedy, ordered all materials to be sealed off until 2039.
tale
Who would benefit most from JFK's death?
Is it Vice President Johnson, the CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, Cuba, or the Soviet Union?
"The Assassination of Kennedy" takes the subjective perspective of New Orleans prosecutor Jim Garrison as the starting point, and the meticulous logic is laid out layer by layer, reducing the matter to a coup d'état, in which the CIA conspires with the Pentagon to overthrow the democratically elected president for the sake of battlefield interests.
A still from "The Assassination of JFK".
Jim Garrison's character is not fictional, he was elected as the New Orleans prosecutor in 1961, and in his first two years in office, he gained a good reputation for not losing a lawsuit.
After a series of investigations, he was convinced that the name Clay Shaw was known through private investigator Jack Martin to the involvement of right-wingers in the CIA conspiracy.
Historical footage of Jim Garrison
1
In March 1967, Jim Garrison arrested and charged New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw with involvement in the assassination of JFK.
2
In January 1969, Shaw was brought before the Criminal Court of the Diocese of Orleans for trial.
3
In March 1969, it took less than an hour for a jury to acquit Shaw.
This "trial of the century" is also the only trial in the Kennedy case.
Kevin Costner's half-hour trial speech in "The Assassination of JFK" has become one of the most classic monologues in film history.
He questioned the absurdity of the "magic bullet theory", and asked what kind of bullet could hit seven holes in one shot;
He questioned that Oswald's identity as a "scapegoat" had already been decided, and that the gunmen were already in place, just waiting for orders;
He suspected that the director of the pathology department had voluntarily destroyed his post-mortem report;
He accused those in power of seeking personal gain in the name of "national security", and when the invisible hand controls the United States, everyone is in danger, how can they be safe?
The most direct consequence of Kennedy's death was to change the course of the Vietnam War, allowing the war to continue at $80 billion a year.
All that's left is chicken feathers — the collective trauma of a generation of Americans about a public event, and uncertainty about the future of the country.
"JFK Assassination" is a mix of archival footage, news photographs, and filmed footage, overlapping black and white with color footage, supplemented by hand-held shaky shots.
Oliver Stone hopes that this seemingly chaotic but deliberately fragmented editing technique can give the audience a sense of urgency.
This sense of urgency symbolizes the people's powerlessness to respond to a sudden and hard-line shift in policy.
When Kennedy was in office, he publicly supported Martin Luther King, Jr.'s civil rights movement, smoothly handled the Cuban crisis, and invested money in the space industry.
Remember the saying: "Fellow Americans, ask not what the country can do for you, but what you can do for the country." ”
After that day, everything was different.
director
Oliver Stone, a three-time Academy Award-winner, is a back-to-back player.
He had studied well at Yale, the highest academic palace in the United States, and had to go to Vietnam to teach for a year.
When he came to Vietnam again in 1967, he was conscripted into the army and participated in the Vietnam War.
A staunch anti-war activist, Oliver Stone returned home and wrote a sharp and realistic cinematic narrative of the past: gunfights, massacres, bombings, and deaths.
Vietnam Trilogy: "Field Platoon", "Born on the Fourth of July", "Heaven and Earth"
In his early days, he was labelled as an "aesthetic of violence", but his core expression was not war itself.
Oliver Stone said, "There's no reason for anyone to make a film of war or violence for the sake of the sensory stimulation of killing people if they can't convey valuable thinking to society." ”
Since then, he has moved between film and documentary filmmakers: from "Wall Street" and "Snowden" to "The Commander" for interviewing Castro and "Interview with Putin" for his conversation with Putin.
His focus is on exposing the complex relationships and ills of the Western ideological machine.
This reminds us of another "old stubborn" in American cinema, Michael Moore.
His "Fahrenheit 911" attempts to expose the inside story of George W. Bush's attack on Iraq after he took office, and analyzes the interests and interests from multiple dimensions in the name of "aggressive" interviews.
It is worth mentioning that the JFK Assassination led to the enactment of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act.
The bill requires that all government files related to the assassination be made public within 25 years, that is, by October 26, 2017.
During the Trump administration, there was a post that predicted that the truth would be revealed.
But almost at the last minute, Mr. Trump "succumbed to the security concerns raised by the intelligence agencies" and withdrew his position.
"The documents that are not released for the time being contain the identities and roles of relevant sources and may be in the hundreds of thousands of pages," the White House said. President Trump has therefore decided to give another six months to review the materials and explain why the documents are not being released for the time being. ”
In 2021, Oliver Stone joined Cannes with his new film "Kennedy Revisited: Through the Telescope", which formed an intertextuality with "JFK Assassination".
The new film, based on James Di Eugenio's "The Fate of the Betrayed: JFK, Cuba and the Garrison Case," reveals that FBI Director Hoover blocked a lot of intelligence and the body was dropped by the FBI.
Over time, almost 99% of the archives are now made public. But it takes a lot of effort and manpower to piece together a complete puzzle from a fragmented archive.
But there is a group of people who believe that as long as there are still people piecing together the pieces of reality, one day the complete truth will be restored.
According to Oliver Stone, most of the material for "JFK Revisited: Through the Telescope" comes from the independent censorship "JFK Assassination Record Review Committee", but the agency's research results have not been reported by any mainstream media.
Now that the Biden administration is in power, it has never been mentioned when the remaining Kennedy material will be released.
Maybe the truth will come one day, maybe never.
But to borrow the acknowledgments from the end credits of "Assassination of JFK":
The pursuit of truth is more valuable than the possession of truth.
Source: "Phoenix Satellite TV Movie Channel"
Editors: Formo Song, Remi