6.7 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Ted Kennedy's life and political career become derailed in the aftermath of a fatal car accident in 1969 that claims the life of a young campaign strategist, Mary Jo Kopechne.
Starring: Jason Clarke, Kate Mara, Ed Helms, Bruce Dern, Jim GaffiganBiography | 100% |
History | 13% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Period | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Crime | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English SDH, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
UV digital copy
DVD copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (locked)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
The 1972 presidential election has gone down in history as one of the more epochal landslides in the annals of American politics, all while the subtext of Watergate was brewing, a subtext which finally exploded and was ultimately instrumental in “defeating” those very election results. I’m not sure where I ran across it, but at one point I found a really interesting old Esquire magazine from circa 1970 or 1971 or thereabouts where whoever wrote the article had approached a bunch of high powered New York advertising agencies to see how they would handle it if Ted Kennedy snatched the Democratic mantle and would attempt a run against Richard Nixon (history buffs will know that George McGovern was the eventual nominee, though in 1970- 71 there really wasn't a solid consensus as to whom the Democrats would nominate in 1972). The whole subtext of this particular article was of course Chappaquiddick, which was still enough of an “issue” in the early 1970s that it seemed to preclude Kennedy even considering a run (something that of course turned out to be the case). The article offered “ad campaigns” for a potential Kennedy run, and I remember to this day one of the more interesting proposals was to have Mary Jo Kopechne’s parents offering their support for Ted Kennedy in the 1972 presidential sweepstakes. That hoped for support of course may have been some “magical thinking” on the part of some over confident ad man, and if Chappaquiddick is taken for being accurate, one would assume the Kopechne family would have nothing to do with Kennedy, let alone voice their support for him in an election. The Kennedy name has long had a mystique that is perhaps inextricably bound up with the tragedies that have repeatedly visited the family, but the thing about Ted Kennedy and what has become known as “the Chappaquiddick incident” is that it was an entirely self inflicted wound. That said, it ultimately didn’t stop Kennedy from coming close to unseating incumbent President Jimmy Carter as the Democratic nominee in 1980, or from maintaining a senate seat for several decades after the horrifying death of Mary Jo Kopechne in an overturned car in a relatively small amount of water.
Chappaquiddick is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. The IMDb lists a variety of Arri products as having been used, with both digital capture and 16mm utilized, all finished at a 2K DI. Despite what looks like an intentionally noisy and splotchy "broadcast" interview segment (see screenshot 6), which may be one of the 16mm uses, and a bit of passing murk in both the (relatively brief) underwater scenes and some dimly lit interior moments, this is an excellent looking transfer that consistently boasts good detail levels and decently if intentionally tamped down palette. The exterior footage of beaches and waterways is quite appealing, with a relatively warm palette, but even here it appears that tonal intensities have been dialed back a bit. Several interior scenes have been graded to an almost buttery yellow color, as can be seen in some of the screenshots accompanying this review. Other moments are graded toward cooler blues, but perhaps surprisingly detail levels never really falter despite these choices.
While Chappaquiddick's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track doesn't offer a lot of "showy" sonics, it's consistently immersive (no horrifying pun intended, in light of a submerged car that led to death). Garth Stevenson's score traverses a variety of genres and instrumentations, and offers a nice spread throughout the surround channels. Almost all of the outdoor material has at least some discrete channelization of ambient environmental sounds. Several of the interior scenes bristle with almost Hawksian overlapping and intense dialogue, and there's good directionality here as well. Fidelity is fine throughout, without any problems whatsoever to report.
You can feel Chappaquiddick arguably straining a bit too hard to tie Kennedy's travails into the overall arc of the "Kennedy mystique" in terms of elements like the repeated references to the space race that President Kennedy helped to initiate, elements that are perhaps really not all that necessary given the immediacy of the story being told. The narrative arc here is predictable, as history dictates, but how these people got to where they ended up is really the driving interest, and in that aspect Chappaquiddick provides a lot of fascinating details. Performances are top notch, technical merits solid, and Chappaquiddick comes Recommended.
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