Interview: Pablo Larrain on His New Film, Jackie -“Behind Every Great Person, There’s a Great Mother.”

In one of the films Pablo Larrain directed this year, he focuses on the life of Pablo Neruda, one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. In the other, Larrain’s subject is one of the greatest icons of the 20th century. Larrain’s latest films, Neruda and Jackie are not your run-of-the-mill biopics. They are artfully creative and push the boundaries of what a biopic can be.

I caught up with Larrain recently to talk about Jackie, which revisits the immediate aftermath of the Kennedy assassination. Natalie Portman plays one of America’s most beloved first lady, Jackie Kennedy. The film is Larrain’s first English-language film, and also the first film featuring a woman in the lead role.

Awards Daily: Wow! This is your first film in English. I have to congratulate you on such a marvelous film. What was it like for you?

Pablo Larrain: I guess the biggest challenge for me was, of course, making a film in English. It wasn’t easy. My other biggest challenge was making a film about a woman. In all my films, the main characters have always been men, so that was the biggest one for me to understand and try to understand this specific sensibility that Jackie is about. Jackie is about the events that happened in the aftermath of the assassination, but mostly, it’s about capturing a specific emotion and sensibility in how a woman was strong enough to do what she did, and all the paradoxes, and controversies that surrounded those events were the biggest challenges for me, but it was also a beautiful process.

AD: Coming from Chile, how much did you know about The Kennedys going in? What was your perception of Jackie?

PL: I have to admit that I had a very silly and superficial idea of her. I thought she was someone who was concerned about style and fabrics and furniture. When I started digging into her character, I discovered how sophisticated, smart and what an incredible woman she actually was.

I think more than anything, it’s also the story of a mother, and I could relate to that to my own mother, and the mother of my children, and to my daughters. I discovered what she did and it was fascinating to work with that humanity and that material.

Movies are based on plots and dramatic structure, but to me, it’s about atmosphere, tones, and emotions, so that’s what I worked with. I learned a lot, and it was also timely with what’s going on in this country right now. You have a woman with substance and is incredible in Michelle Obama as the First Lady. Then you have Hillary who is hopefully about to become the president. We already have a female as a president in Chile and I’m so proud of that.

AD: We both do right?

PL: Yes! It’s not about gender equality, it’s beyond that. What’s the real role and the necessity of women in every aspect of society, they say, “Behind every man, there’s a great woman.” I would say that “Behind every great person, there’s a great mother.” That’s what I like to relate to and think of about Jackie.

AD: That’s what I thought when I saw the film, it’s a reminder of a great woman, and a great, iconic woman, let’s talk about Natalie Portman because I know you were adamant you wanted her in the film.

PL: When you dig into Jackie, there’s a lot of history about her. There are TV shows, movies, books and there’s just so much material, but yet we know very little about her. She’s probably the most unknown of the most famous people ever, and it’s fascinating. Whatever she worked on, she was someone who had an incredible amount of history. If you look at her in photos, and in the White House Story on You Tube, you can see this woman going around, talking about the restoration she did, and all she did. You’d look at her and wonder. Her eyes had something mysterious that you could never capture, and combine that with this sophistication is something that Natalie had, and that was they key as to why I thought she was born to play that role. So when she accepted, I was so happy. We made the movie, and Natalie has that mystery because it’s hard to know what’s going on in those eyes, and that’s the door to keeping an active audience.

AD: What I loved about the film is that Jackie is left a mysterious character.

PL: I’m so glad you said that. I don’t think it’s possible to make any film about anyone and you can put that person in a box, and that’s also the same with Neruda. What you try to do is have people walk out of the cinema was a specific emotion about those characters. That’s one of the amazing things about cinema when you think of movies you love, you’re doing that through an emotional memory and that’s fascinating, and it’s one of the things we intended to achieve.

You’re not going to walk out of the cinema knowing who Jackie Kennedy was, but you might be able to understand what she did and see and feel something about a woman who went through this whole process of grieving for an entire country.

AD: When you think of the Kennedys, you think of Camelot which you have a wonderful scene in the film capturing her loneliness in that moment.

PL: The script had this great idea of Camelot, and I called Noah Oppenheim the writer and told him we need to work on this script in a way that I can understand it and relate to it. I didn’t want to assume things that most Americans would assume because they know the story. I really needed to understand it.
I discovered that it was a record which was hard to find, but when I found it, I listened to it, and it was incredible. That loneliness and that idea of her changing those dresses and walking around the empty White House like a cosmic ghost is about understanding the myth. She became a Queen without her King, she portrayed that with such strength in going through that process. She was protecting his legacy and made him a legend, and she became an icon. All of which you see in the film.

AD: I noticed you did a lot of tight shots, walking towards the camera or away from it. What was the choice in that?

PL: When Natalie was closer to the camera, and you see her eyes, they are the doors to that mystery we were just talking about. The audience fulfills what’s not being told by the story. There’s this unknown gap. Everyone can relate to it from their own perspective, and you end up with an active audience which is what I expect from a film. I don’t want to have all the answers, I want to think. If you’re able to do that then you can stick to the story in a personal way, and the movie becomes personal. That, I guess you do through the enormous cosmic mystery she has.

AD: What did you use to shoot in?

PL: We shot film and in Super 16. Usually when you shoot a movie, you have rules where you’re going to shoot like this, frame like this, and use this lens. We didn’t do that for this film. We’d just go on to the set and get into situations, see what was going on and see what felt right. That’s why we have handheld, crane or track shots. We felt free doing it that way. I kept telling Natalie, to forget about where we’re going, forget about the previous scene, let’s just focus on this one, and then we’ll see how it plays on film. It’s a movie based on random memories, slices of memory, pieces of pain, love and grief, as well as joy, and it’s all an emotional blend of elements.

AD: I have to ask, are you going to be doing more in English?

PL: I don’t know. I want to finish this and talk about the films, but I am just looking for the right story and right connection whatever language it is in.

Jackie will have it’s gala screening at AFI Fest on Monday November 14.