Posted on 04/06/2018 6:56:36 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Brian De Palma’s 1981 political thriller Blow Out was the first movie that dared address the events conjured by the single term “Chappaquiddick.” It was a generational provocation. De Palma, whose comedies Greetings, Phantom of the Paradise, and Hi, Mom! were obsessed with the JFK assassination, advanced to make a deeply emotional film reenacting a well-known loss of life (a supposedly disposable female victim played by Nancy Allen) and national disillusionment. De Palma raised that tragedy, involving both a callous political cover-up and society’s general naïveté, into larger concerns: Blow Out’s daring aesthetic examination of a film technician’s (John Travolta) cinematic-moral process that also expressed modern American despair. Blow Out is an overwhelming movie experience, a would-be classic if it weren’t all but ignored by today’s largely unprincipled film culture.
Partisan animus is ignored to facilitate an understanding of human culpability. The movie doesn’t exonerate Kennedy, but it challenges viewers to ease off their judgmental reflex.
That’s why John Curran’s less flamboyant, more realistic approach in Chappaquiddick is such a moving surprise. Curran modestly takes on the historical events of the evening in 1969 when political campaigner Mary Jo Kopechne died in a submerged car, after Ted Kennedy accidentally drove the vehicle into the ocean. De Palma reimagined those incidents (including the cultural aftershock) with a combination of dreamlike intensity and paranoia. But Curran goes directly for the morally complex legend of the Massachusetts scion, to show how this political figure compromised himself.
In terms of both film and political history, Chappaquiddick is also a classic. Curran (and screenwriters Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan) break away from the Kennedy legacy so beloved by mainstream media. But these filmmakers also oppose the Millennial tendency toward demonization. Maybe every media consumer should see this film
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Blow Out was the one good John Travolta movie.
RE: Blow Out was the one good John Travolta movie.
What? Not Saturday Night Fever? :)
I saw “Chappaquiddick” last night. They did a good job and played it pretty “straight” — it could have been so much harsher on the Kennedys and the Democrats, of course, but at least the filmmakers presented some of the key facts in a way that Hollyweird and the MSM never want to touch.
The theater was virtually empty (just one other couple), so I fear this is going to be a commercial flop unless that showing was very atypical.
I’ll be helping the movie out this weekend. I very seldom go to out to cinemas, so this will be a rare exception.
About 48 years too late.
The bottom line is, Ted was having an affair with Mary Jo, and he was drunk, and he did leave the scene of the accident, and failed to report it in a timely manner. Anyone else would have gone to jail for manslaughter
Good. teddy got away with his crime since it happened in 1969. A normal person would still be in jail. He used his money and influence to get away scot free.
He was a worm and a turd. I hope there’s a way he can see past the flames and the smoke in the place that the pope says doesn’t exist and watch this movie.
Because disco sucked.
I still want to see Teddy removed from Arlington.
He desecrates hallowed ground.
‘Great scream.....great scream’
Hollywood is desperate to get Conservatives back to the movies.
Notice that they don’t make any films that would actually hurt current democrat politicians.
Me too...
Ted was screwing whatever he could back then, but he had a German mistress as his regular squeeze. The girls on the island were all 20 something single girls partying with 30 + married guys. That was a formula for casual sex even back then. Ted made 17 credit card calls after midnight and before he reported it. Some to the mistress and a lot to his handlers and lawyers. He also arranged for his private pilot to ferry Mary Jo’s body to Scranton in one of them. Nixon had a guy there the next day investigating the incident and knew all this.
Not “Pulp Fiction”?
The route of Ted's driving on Chappaquiddick
Very interesting - about 11 minutes.
Yep, all them old people in that nursing home may not have had all their wits about them but they remembered that they didn't like Ted Kennedy.
Very interesting——and according to that video he walked right past my aunt’s house on North Water St——I don’t recall ever hearing that version before.
.
So, he makes a fast beeline down a road drunk. And the rest is history.
PING
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.