Anyone a teenager or older in the 1960s remembers the 'age of Camelot" and its horrific ending on November 22, 1963. The TV scenes from that day, and the week after, are embedded in our heads and the re-enactment of these scenes are the ones that move us the most in "Jackie".

Natalie Portman, who is being touted as the one to beat in the Oscar race, plays the title role and it really isn't one sustained part but a part of cameos to show her before during and after the death of her husband, the President of the United States, Jack Kennedy (played by Caspar Phillipson).

The premise is that Jackie is being interviewed, and she was by Theodore H. White, shortly after his death and burial, by an unamed journalist played by Billy Crudup. It is some question if she was more interested in preserving her husband's name and presidency or was she just a widow grieving for a dead husband and concerned of the legacy her children would deal with.

Many of the scenes are really private moments by herself, or with others, and one wonders how much is true and how much is the figment of screenwriter Noah Oppenheim's and director Pablo Larrain's minds.

Peter Sarsgaard as Bobby Kenedy, John Hurt as a priest who hears Jackie's thought of the existence of G-D, John Carrol Lynch as Lyndon B. Johnson, who reenacts the famous swearing in scene on the plane as Jackie in her blood-stained stands near him, Max Casella, as Jack Valenti, are all good in their roles but it is Great Gerwig, as Nancy Tuckerman, a loyal aide of Jackie's, that offers the most interesting role and her relationship to the First Lady.

Was Jaqueline Kennedy as calculating as she is made to sound regarding her insisting her husband's funeral follow that of Abraham Lincoln's? Was "Camalot" something she made up or a real part of her life and his presidency? She brought a certain class to the White House that had very seldom, if ever, been seen there not only with her doing an extensive redecorating job, all done with private funding, and with the Arts, but presenting an image for future First Ladies to try and match or better.

Though I wasn't as moved by Portman's performance as many seem to be and it was the showing of indelible moments we saw 53 years ago over and over on TV, and all the printed media, that affected many of us most in the audience, I would recommend this film to any one born after 1945.

It is the act of Jack Kennedy's head with his brains pouring out of his head in Jackie Kennedy's lap and her trying to put them back that made me once again hide my eyes from seeing that on the screen and being one of the main reasons I still admire her today.

By the way "Jackie" has one of the worst soundtracks of music that I have heard on screen in more years than I can remember, except for Richard Burton singing "Camelot" from the show he starred in on Broadway. At times I wanted to put in ear plugs!

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