Released in 1991, The Assassination of Kennedy, directed by Oliver Stone, is a great film about the investigation into the assassination of the President of the United States. The greatness of this film is not that it found the murderer of President Kennedy, that it reflects how many facts have not been made public, that it has no strict factual basis, and that its greatness lies in the fact that it objectively reflects the atmosphere and emotions of the entire American society after the assassination of President Kennedy.
The Assassination of Kennedy is 206 minutes long, and in the "long" film, director Oliver Stone adds a lot of press materials, documentaries, and live photos that have been repeatedly analyzed to the molecular level. It can be said that the relevant historical materials in the nearly 30 years from the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963, to the release of the film, are properly quoted in the film.
However, the word of mouth after the release of the film was polarized, and fans, americans, and professional film critics all highly praised the film. However, traditional media people based on facts have criticized the film vigorously, believing that this film ignores the facts and manipulates right and wrong.
The famous American film critic Roger Ebert about this phenomenon has a reasonable reply, he believes that the film itself reflects the facts at all, the film is not used as a basis for the police to solve the case, although the film cites a large number of historical events, real people and on-site evidence: such as the Bay of Pigs incident, the only murderer in the case, Oswald, Zapo Luther film, three shootings within 2.6 seconds, Alan Dulles, then the director of the CIA, and so on.
But Roger Ebert believes that the film's director, Oliver Stone, hopes to make his film more convincing through these factual bases, and the orientation of the whole film, and what the film reflects, is not the conspiracy theory that is really seen in the film. It's the mood of American society as a whole, after the assassination of President Kennedy, the sadness of the people. In other words, these revelations of real emotions in society are not directly related to who is the murderer.
The reason why director Oliver Stone connects these events so much is because such a form is more likely to resonate with the audience. The resonance of these emotions and the truth are not too closely related, but the symbol of a country, and after falling in this form, the people's confidence in the current living environment is lacking. As the film's protagonist, Orleans' prosecutor Garrison (played by Kevin Costner), says, he does not allow his children to grow up in such an environment, but what is the objective truth about this environment? In the end, the film is only speculative, and there is no accurate conclusion.
In order to express this uneasy emotion, the film cleverly "pieced together" the picture style, which includes movies, television news, text publications, and documentaries related to the assassination. The director and his camera crew used a variety of visual effects: black and white, photographs, rough videos, color screens, handheld shaking shots, etc. For this, the film also won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography.
With these means, the director only expressed the emotional changes of the people before and after the assassination of President Kennedy, such as the black servant in the family of prosecutor Garrison, who repeatedly shed tears after learning of Kennedy's assassination because of President Kennedy's protection of black human rights.
It is worth mentioning that Gary Oldman, who played the murderer Oswald in the film, also played a perverted policeman in the later film "This Killer Is Not Too Cold". In this film, director Oliver Stone chose Galliodman to play Oswald because they are closer in image, and Galliedman's neurotic performance style is easier for the audience to associate with the murderous killer Oswald. After years in the film, Gary Oldman won an Oscar for his role as Churchill in Darkest Hour.
In the film, the reason why the director chose Orleans prosecutor Garrison as the protagonist and led the audience through the screen through the screen to enter the assassination of President Kennedy from Garrison's perspective is of deep significance. Because compared with the official Warren Report of the United States, Garrison's perspective is closer to that of ordinary people observing the case. Many "state secrets" cannot be accessed, and eyewitnesses have been seen die one by one, at least from the perspective of ordinary people.
The assassination of President Kennedy was controversial 30 years, if not longer. It's because the American people don't want to accept the assassination of President Kennedy, or because they don't want it to happen in the United States. When they take this emotion with them, to look back, to the trial, to speculate about the assassination of President Kennedy, their emotions are helpless, sad, and panicked.
When Garrison and his companions discuss the case in the film, you and I say a word, it seems that their respective views are sonorous and powerful, tit-for-tat, this is a small skill of the director of this film, these people in the eyes of the audience, in fact, what they represent, what they debate is the doubts and restlessness of ordinary Americans, a kind of wandering and sadness of their own motherland.
Many years later, the American people's attention to this case is a kind of group psychological state reaction, they are deeply touched by this case, and the film "Assassination of Kennedy" has captured the psychological state of the people very well. Director Oliver Stone, through a strong stylized lens language, through the performance of the protagonists in the film, deeply excavated the psychological state of the entire society.
In the end, the truth found in the film is more meaningful than who the murderer was. At the end of the film's discussion, it is more about the people's right to know. At the end, the protagonist of the film, Garrison, insists that he has found the truth, in fact, he has not seen anything, his so-called truth, there is no legal evidence, he shows the same as the public, not to find the truth, but how to get out of the pain of the event. The people hope to find psychological comfort by denouncing the murderer and punishing evil. To make up for their sadness and restlessness, which they have nowhere to release, is the key to the film.
I believe that even after 10 years, when more truth and evidence are presented to the public, that restless emotion and uneasiness will not dissipate, which is the state of the whole society. The last thing people really let go of is not the murderer, but themselves.