Brian Truitt

USA TODAY

Amid the infamy and tragedy of having a famous husband, Jacqueline Kennedy gives her most revealing confession in Jackie to a priest: “I never wanted fame. I just became a Kennedy.”

The iconic first lady is given emotional complexity and rich understanding through a stirring and ambitious performance by Natalie Portman in director Pablo Larrain’s powerful drama (***½ out of four; rated R; in theaters Friday in New York and Los Angeles, expanding nationwide through January). It's less a biopic than an experimental character study — an effective one — looking at Jackie’s private life in the traumatic days following her husband’s assassination.

Journalist Theodore White (Billy Crudup) reports to Jackie’s Hyannis Port estate a week after JFK is killed for the interview in which she famously links the Kennedy presidency to Arthurian legend and the "one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot." But Jackie is no weak widow: She makes it clear she controls the conversation and even edits his notes, determined to have this be her own version of what happened.

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The film shadows Jackie through the 1962 White House TV special she films “to impart a sense of America’s greatness,” the fateful day in Dallas when she tries to keep the top of her spouse's head intact after he's shot, and her efforts to maintain dignity and majesty as she wonders what will happen to their “Camelot” legacy.

Different people see Jackie’s many layers, from social secretary Nancy Tuckerman (Greta Gerwig) to her brother-in-law Bobby Kennedy (Peter Sarsgaard). But the man who pulls real truth from Jackie is the elderly Father McSorley (John Hurt), with whom she discusses God, man’s search for meaning and her deepest insecurities.

Larrain intersperses his characters with real news footage and recordings from the era, Mica Levi's haunting string score expertly heightens Jackie’s tumultuous state, and while its nonlinear narrative muddies the plot, Noah Oppenheim’s otherwise tight screenplay offers a variety of interesting confrontations between Jackie and the political players around her.

A for-sure Oscar best actress contender if there is one, Portman gives such a tour-de-force showing that many of her best moments are silent performances. Aboard Air Force One, she weepily wipes blood off her face as Jackie makes herself presentable for the swearing-in of Lyndon B. Johnson (John Carroll Lynch) — in front of the same mirror where she applied her makeup just hours before. Later, a shellshocked Jackie quietly takes off her bloodstained dress at the White House before finally breaking down in the shower.

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The actress has done her research well, with her breathless vocals resembling Jackie’s own, yet Portman gives her a distinctive spark, too, especially in the way she handles her young children and Bobby. Brandishing an inconsistent Massachusetts accent, Sarsgaard is nevertheless strong as RFK, who laments not being able to do much for the country now. “What did we accomplish?” he asks Jackie. “We’re just the beautiful people.”

The interesting matter of Jackie’s place in the center of a political storm is only touched on, but the film leans more into the personal moments, such as Jackie playing the final song on the Camelot soundtrack one more time on her bedroom Victrola before leaving the White House for good.

“There won’t be another Camelot,” Jackie tells White. And there may never be another Jackie, thanks to Portman’s signature, spectacular turn.