Vintage

A film like JFK keeps the imagination and search for truth and meaning alive in a way a historical account can never really do.  Picture making a film in another country, where you can critically put forth the notion that your own government may have played a hand in having one of its most famous leaders killed.  Would a film like this be possible in any other country?  Go ahead and try to make one:  you might be JFK’d!   

If you are gathering that I liked this film, you are right.  It is a conspiracy theory masterpiece of film and perhaps the best we are likely find in the genre for some time. First, JFK deals with a conspiracy of epic proportions and delivers on its grand theories.  Second, it is masterfully handled and put together. 

Oliver Stone interweaves Jim Garrison’s (Kevin Costner) investigation into the assassination of Kennedy like a virtuoso melding every type of media, various film grains and different camera techniques to capture and convey the mystery and suspicion many have had since JFK was killed and told it was the act of one lone gunmen.  He is assembling all the loose facts into an organized timeline, something we could never quite seem to do for ourselves. 

From shots of well-groomed “hobos” to doctored photos to conversations with nameless informants and threats both veiled and unveiled, JFK leads us down a dark journey into our worst nightmares about Government.  A theory that claims what really took place when Kennedy was killed was a coup d’état , an overthrow of our government by various high-level interests within it, that needed Kennedy out of the way so wars could be fought and billions could be spent on a greed-driven military industrial complex, something forewarned by Eisenhower between rounds of golf. 

Now I don’t necessarily subscribe to that conclusion, but I do adhere to the notion that there was more than meets the eye when it came to Kennedy’s assassination.  JFK drives that point home.  Given all the evidence, given the difficulty of what Oswald would have had to pull off alone and a welter of other facts surrounding Oswald’s affiliations and training, it would appear Garrison was onto something.  Maybe not the right thing, but onto to something sinister indeed.  This is where JFK strikes conspiracy gold: the film doesn’t underscore what the truth is but rather what the truth is not and that truth is not the Warren Commission’s whitewash investigation. 

The Warren Commission’s findings that Oswald acted alone are implausible and that is what the truth is not.  However, we have to consider: given the turmoil of the times and shaken belief in America itself, which the assassination caused, could there be any other favorable finding to help heal a nation in mourning other than the Warren Commission’s report?  Probably not.  So maybe it was like medicine. Still, that does not assuage those of us that want and demand the truth. 

It has been said that the best arguments do not prove one’s own case is right, but rather, simply, that the other person’s is wrong.  Stone’s film proves that something is wrong with what we are told.  Something is still incomplete about the JFK assassination and it will forever haunt Americans till all the questions can be answered.  Stone’s JFK beckons us to keep searching for the truth.  Anyone not familiar with the assassination will want to learn more about it and CoverUps.com encourages you to do so. A good place to start is our very own section devoted to John F. Kennedy.  

One day all the evidence of the JFK assassination will be made available to the public, only another decade from now.  By then, who will really care?  Maybe that is the point of keeping the information locked down for decades.  Maybe it is the hope that the American people will simply forget and regard the killing of one of its most famous Presidents as something that simply happened in the past? 

Perhaps when all the evidence comes out it will be so long in the rear view mirror, than no one will care.  But, it is a film like JFK that will keep that interest in finding the real truth alive, which is what I find great about this film.  It is this film's legacy that it will keep the seekers of the truth going.  It is a masterful cover-ups film.

Matthew J. DeReno is a writer living in Pittsburgh.