I don’t get the hate for Stone and the way he told this story. It’s a fictionalized account of a real event. Obviously, there is a lot that people don’t know about the story, including how it all really went down. Growing up, I learned about the event and heard many theories about the assassination, some involving one shooter, some involving two or more. I thought Stone’s version was just him saying- OK, for purposes of the movie, I have to pick one, so here’s how I’m going to do it. And I thought the fact that he identified so many boogeymen to the point of ridiculousness was intentional, as if to say- “I’ve made this story so implausable that I don’t really intend for anyone to believe it’s the way it really went down, so if I can leave you with any message here, it is don’t believe everything you’re told”. Costner’s last line in the film, which he says right to the camera, essentially says as much.
Isn’t it a mistake from the outset to take the movie as “an explanation of the JFK assassination”? Isn’t the movie really “The Jim Garrison Show” and it just sells better if you call it “JFK”? I haven’t read the source material, which was Jim Garrison’s book. How true is the movie to the source material?
It’s actually simpler than that; conspiracy theorists like to make things seem complicated. Most “mysteries” about the Kennedy assassination turn out to be bunk when a responsible journalist examines them.
The best book yet on the Kennedy assassination is Gerald Posner’s Case Closed. ABC News also did an excellent two-hour special on the 30th anniversary in 2003. It includes 3-D computer animation recreations allowing the viewer to see the events in Dealey Plaza from virtually any angle.
But that’s not really the case at all. This isn’t like “Thirteen Days” or “Apollo 13,” which are attempts to present historical events that rely on some trivial fictionalizations to make it a properly paced movie; it’s not even “Saving Private Ryan” or “Titanic,” movies that tell an unquestionably fictional story as the frontpeice of an effort to show how a historical event felt. Steven Spielberg and James Cameron did not actually try to convince people that there was a mission to save a paratrooper named James Ryan, or that an upper class teenager named Rose actually got pronged by a charming, poor artist aboard the Titanic.
JFK was a movie that deliberately presented things that are simply false as being fact. The movie was unambiguously represented as exploring facts about the JFK assassination and subsequent legal ramblings.
Dishonesty isn’t a valid point of view; we’re not required to respect statement about how JFK was murdered by a Mafia-CIA-Cuba triumvirate, or for that matter about how the moon landings were hoaxes, or about how Jews and the Tripartite Commission run the world. Such claims should rightly be ridiculed.
I don’t think that’s true at all. I didn’t get the impression that Stone was trying to convince me that his account was factual, and if you believe that then you’re reading way too much into it. The guy is a storyteller, and he did what he did for dramatic tension. It’s not a documentary. Because of the “mystery” that has always surrounded the event, I think many people wanted, maybe on a subliminal level, the movie to tell the definitive truth. In the end, it was pretty over the top in terms of the story it told that I’m surprised anyone actually believes that Stone wants us to take it as fact.
I just noticed that Amazon sells the ABC News special at a much lower price than ABC News does.
As I said above, seeing it as a teenager, I was greatly influenced by it. I thought it was backed by legitimate evidence and always had trouble coming to a conclusion other than conspiracy because of “facts” presented by Stone.
While I later developed critical thinking skills that helped me reach a different conclusion, a lot of people simply believe what they see.
It is amazing what people believe are true stories.
I saw the movie-I thought it was poorly constructed and rambled. The thing i found fascinating: how could a NUT like Jim Garrison have become DA for new orleans? The case he attempted to make was absurd-he had little if any evidence on Clay Shaw. From what i read, garrison became mentally ill-he was seeing conspirators in his soup.
For me, the movie was a parable about how zealous DAs have to be carefully watched-they can ruin people’s lives, reputations, and bankrupt them. Jim garrison was also NOT the nice family man that the film portrays him as…he was suspected of a lot of nasty activities.