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"She was an incredibly mysterious person,
and I think Natalie has that in her eyes.
That’s why I wanted so many close-ups.”
Pablo Larraín
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"Pablo Larraín told Natalie Portman he would ask the writer, Noah Oppenheim, to cut every scene in the script that didn’t include her. “I remember she sort of opened her eyes wide,” he says. “I guess that’s frightening for an actor. But at the same time it’s challenging, and Natalie’s a real artist and she takes risks.” "She was an incredibly mysterious person, and I think Natalie has that in her eyes. That’s why I wanted so many close-ups.” (New York Magazine, November 28, 2016)
*
Pablo Larraín: "We have another draft in which I had [screenwriter] Noah [Oppenheim] remove all the scenes without Jackie. Natalie accepts. I honestly didn’t expect someone like her to work with someone who made the movies I made. But this says a lot about her, that she’s willing to take risks with people" (Film Comment)
***
"Larrain's masterful drama uses incessant close-ups to dig deeply into the conflicted interior condition of his subject."
(The 25 Best Movies of 2016, ESQUIRE, #5. JACKIE)
***
"Many of his shots of Portman (photographed to glowing luminescence by Stéphane Fontaine) are straight-on close ups, so we can see everything that is real (her expressive eyes, her changeable moods) and everything that is affected (her mouth working those over-enunciated words, the way she smokes as though she’d never lifted a cigarette before). Larraín seems not just unafraid of the moments of kitsch but fascinated by them, amused by them, wanting to investigate and play with them. (...) Portman, whom you do really get to think about as an actress during this film with its many lingering close-ups, has an ethereal, elusive quality, a face that sometimes seems made shy by its own beauty, as though she might run away from it if she could.".
(THE PLAYLIST - Natalie Portman Is Better Than Ever In Pablo Larrain’s Kennedy Biopic ‘Jackie’ | Venice Review)
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