JFK - Oliver Stone

Oliver Stone is nowadays being known as a legendary film director and screenwriter. Often very controversial, his work has earned him three Academy Awards. His work is most of the time focused on contemporary political and cultural issues and has a tendency to rise up controversy among its viewer’s. Stone’s fame began with a series of films about the Vietnam War, a subject very close to him as he himself participated to this war as an infantry soldier. But his major work is the colossal film JFK, which Stone himself considers the best of his films and describes it as a “counter-myth” to the “myth” exposed by the commission delegated to investigate the case, the Warren Commission. The making of the film was also a little bit different from all the others, this film representing a change in Stone’s work, because it was with this film that he began to explore different camera styles and angles in order to create a multi-dimensional way of showing a movie.

Oliver Stone’s film is in my opinion not only Stone’s best film, but also one of the greatest films of all time because it is all that a film should be: entertaining, very good acted and directed and most important of all, educational. We must admit that it was quite brave of Stone to decide to make a movie about one of the most confusing events of the 20th century- the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. The film was adapted from the books On the Trail of the Assassins by Jim Garrison and Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs. Due to its subject this film remains, even years after it’s release in 1991, one of the most controversial and hotly debated films of all times.

I shamefully must admit that my knowledge of Kennedy’s assassination consisted of not that many facts and details, so watching the movie really made me wonder of what really happened on November 1963. Moreover I must complain that Stone mixed fact and conjuncture so impeccably that it was difficult for me to find the difference. The film itself portrays one of the most mysterious and tragic events in the history of America, the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the findings of the Warren Commission. The Warren Commission was the unofficial name of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, established by Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the case. Three days after the tragic event this commission concluded in a 888- page report that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the killing of JFK and the wounding of Texas Gov John Connally. In my view this is the most ridiculous theories ever presented because I wonder how a single assassin, who proved to be not a professional shouter could fire three shots from a manual rifle from a window at a sixth floor aiming a moving car and causing nine wounds from only three bullets. We must take in consideration also the fact that shots were fired in 5.6 seconds while the gun supposed to be used was not so advanced and needed 2.1 seconds to recycle the rifle between shots. I don’t know a lot of mathematics but even I know that the numbers don’t add up. Furthermore it is supposed that the second bullet went through President Kennedy’s neck and caused a lot of wounds in Governor Connally, while remaining intact. This is, in my opinion a very surprising bullet- a magic bullet because not only did it manage to cause seven wounds and to enter and re-enter into the two victims but it also paused 1.6 seconds before entering in the final victim. The other two bullets were quite normal; the first one missed, wounding a bystander while the third one strikes Kennedy in the head making a frontal contact, although the shots supposedly came from behind. Although one might believe that firing the shots, hiding the gun on the complete other side of the floor, running down six floors and ending up on the second floor of another building completely calm, might take more than 30 seconds- it wasn’t believed so by the Warren Commission who claimed it to be possible.

What I also find strange is how rapidly all the events in that period took place. I initially thought that that rapidness was only in the movie only to later find out that that was really how it is supposed to have happened. After the assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald walks from the building and supposedly decides to kill a Dallas police officer. Not long after he is taken into custody by the police, who by the way I think is surprisingly prompt, unlike in all other political assassinations in the history, when a certain time was needed before the assassin was caught. Furthermore, what amazed me the most was the patriotic sense of nightclub owner, Jack Ruby, who shoots Oswald live on television while surrounded by cops in the basement of the Dallas police station. The situation turns out to be very convenient because Oswald does not get to tell his story, his part of the truth and is unable to prove his innocence. I honestly doubt that a person will look to revenge the death of its president in front of live TV cameras and surrounded by policemen.

Even before seeing the film I had some doubts regarding the circumstances of Kennedy’s assassination and how the case was solved but after watching the film and how the experts put things together I tend to become surer of the conspiracy behind this tragic event. There are a lot of situations and questions that just don’t add up and for which the authorities don’t find logical answers. The first strange thing was the last minute change of the parade route bringing it into Dealey Plaza, protected by very few bodyguards and the fact that Oswald does not shoot Kennedy coming up Houston Street, which was the easier shot - instead, Kennedy turns onto Elm into a standard assassination triangulation of crossfire. Although a lot of witnesses stated that they heard more than three gun shots, which came from different directions, their testimonies weren’t taken into consideration and some even claim that their testimonies were changed. Also, their were testimonies, among which that of Gordon Arnold, who had served in the military and who knew how a gunfire sounds, that claimed that there was a shot coming from behind the picket fence, and were a man wearing a police uniform was seen. So at least four shots have been heard but nobody seemed to care or to want to investigate.