Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.5

Chappaquiddick Blu-ray Movie Review

The Kennedy Mistake.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 22, 2018

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.

Those of you who frequent the “usual suspects” in the cable news business could very well have seen one of the many references to the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy which just occurred a couple of weeks ago. It may be difficult for younger folks especially, many of whom I suspect may have responded to this film's title with a resounding "What's a Chappaquiddick?", to realize how lionized the Kennedys were in the wake of the killings of Bobby and of course his brother President Kennedy. There was a tragic aura that surrounded the family and which probably only tended to elevate Ted’s reputation. Very few of John F. Kennedy’s peccadilloes had been revealed and/or discussed back in the day, and despite typical political brickbats aimed at Bobby (and, frankly, Teddy) the family held an unparalleled position in the general cultural zeitgeist of America at the time. Interestingly (if somewhat tangentially), I’d personally say the real cracks in the Kennedy mystique actually started to appear when Jackie decided to marry Aristotle Onassis, a decision which some have said was directly tied to the assassination of Bobby, since it made Jackie revisit the traumas she had experienced firsthand on the fateful day in November 1963.

What Chappaquiddick makes abundantly clear is that the Kennedys themselves were only too aware of how they were viewed by the public at large, and in fact part of the film’s interest is in seeing some of the “backstage drama” in the wake of the accident that left Ted (Jason Clarke) injured (supposedly, anyway) and Mary Jo Kopechne (Kate Mara) dead. While Chappaquiddick may elide certain elements of the story, one thing it makes almost depressingly clear is Ted’s lack of “vigor” (to use a favorite word of his presidential brother) in responding to the tragedy, either the night or it happened, or indeed in the initially subsequent days. In the film Kennedy is portrayed as only too aware of what the situation will do to his reputation (and by default, to his extended family), and seems to be more concerned about that aspect than the “little” fact that a woman died.

Chappaquiddick is frequently an arresting (no pun intended) character study, though what kind of “character” Kennedy is may be debatable, as evidenced by his first reaction after the accident: “I’m not going to be president.” Clarke really does a quite convincing job with a perhaps inherently unsympathetic role, and he is surrounded by equally good performances by Ed Heims as cousin Joe Gargan, Jim Gaffigan as U.S. Attorney Paul Markham and Bruce Dern as paterfamilias Joseph Kennedy.

The pull quote emblazoned across the cover of Chappaquiddick touts “a riveting thriller”, but I have to say as riveting as the film undeniably often is, there really isn’t a “thriller” element at play, at least for the many who are going to know from the outset that Kennedy made it through the scandal, obviously wounded but perhaps surprisingly not mortally so. Instead, the film really works best as a primer on “crisis management”, with competing interests urging Kennedy to do the honorable thing and resign his Senate seat and other, perhaps more mendacious, advisers insisting he could weather the storm and emerge relatively unscathed. It’s in this element that Chappadquiddick really tends to resonate in our current political climate, where public perception is at least as important as the actual “facts”.

Chappaquiddick Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

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.

Chappaquiddick Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

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.

Chappaquiddick Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• A Reckoning: Revisiting Chappaquiddick (1080p; 25:19) is an above average overview, with some decent interviews and production data.


• Bridge to the Past: Editing the Film (1080p; 12:45) focuses on editor Keith Fraase, who talks about how nervous director John Curran initially was to work with him, since Curran had only worked with one editor on all of his previous features.

Chappaquiddick Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

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.