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 A Very Wrong Turn 

Jason Clarke
Jason Clarke
Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures
 106 Minutes
Directed byJohn Curran
Starring: Jason Clarke, Kate Mara 

Chappaquiddick is one of those names that everyone knows, but, as time goes by, few people actually know much about. For most people it’s a place somewhere in Massachusetts where a young woman died one night nearly 50 years ago in a car driven by U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy. And, depending on people’s politics, they remember the event as either an unfortunate tragic accident or a case of murder, even though many of those with the strongest points of view don’t really know that much about it. Now, noted director John Curran takes a shot at portraying the events on the island in the aptly named Chappaquiddick, a movie that puts many of the questions into focus but doesn’t provide answers to the most pressing of those questions.


For the record, Chappaquiddick is an island just off the coast of a larger island, Martha’s Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts. It’s a place for people to get away from it all, and that’s what Kennedy (Jason Clarke) and a number of his friends and associates did on the weekend of July 18, 1969. Kennedy was there to sail in an annual regatta and for a party at a beach house in honor of the “boiler room girls,” a group of young women who had helped out on his brother Bobby’s ill-fated presidential campaign the year before. One of those women was Mary Jo Kopechne (Kate Mara), who had gotten involved in other political campaigns since that of Bobby Kennedy.


Late that night, Ted left the party with Mary Jo, with the avowed purpose of driving her over a narrow bridge to the town of Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard, where her hotel room was. According to the movie’s version of events, the two stopped in a secluded spot to discuss life and politics and then left to avoid being spotted by a police car. However, Kennedy’s car went off the bridge, flipped, and landed in the water. Kennedy was able to swim to safety, but Mary Jo was trapped inside. Ted then went back to the beach house to get help from his cousin, Joe Gargan (Ed Helms) and another friend, Paul Markham (Jim Gaffigan).


When Gargan and Markham were unable to rescue Mary Jo, Ted told them he would get help in Edgartown. He did swim back to Edgartown, but, instead of getting help, went to bed and then ate breakfast the next morning. Before Ted actually notified the authorities, a local fisherman found Ted’s car in the water and divers eventually recovered Mary Jo’s body. After giving a statement to the Edgartown police, Ted returned to his family home.


While Ted was returning home, his father Joseph Kennedy (Bruce Dern) notified a coterie of political operatives including former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (Clancy Brown) and Kennedy family speechwriter Ted Sorensen (Taylor Nichols). For the most part, they took over the handling of the affair, including trying to put the best spin possible on the events and preserve Ted’s reputation as much as possible. Eventually, a week later, Ted made a speech giving his latest version of the events and asking to let him know whether to resign from the Senate (of course, he went on to serve for an additional four decades).


Chappaquiddick does a very good job of portraying the undisputed facts of the case in as non-sensational a manner as possible. For this alone, director John Curran and screenwriters Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan deserve considerable credit. Some aspects of the film—and the incident on which it is based—are striking. For example, the bridge Kennedy drove off made a sharp turn and had no guardrail. At night, dimly lit, it was an accident waiting to happen. On the other hand, the film makes clear that, on the way back to the beach house, Kennedy passed by a house with a phone and later bypassed several opportunities to notify the police.


But, of course, there is more to the story than the undisputed facts, and the filmmakers have their own interpretation, one that does not portray Ted in a very good light. He is clearly shown to be the lightweight of the Kennedy family, thrust into the spotlight after the death of his older brothers only because he is the last man standing. Two bits of invented dialogue bring this out brilliantly. The first occurs when he arrives at the beach house and, when Gargan asks Kennedy what is wrong, he replies “I’m not going to be President.” The second quote is even more succinct, when Ted asks his father what to do and Joe, who had recently suffered a stroke, is able to say one word, “Alibi.” (which Ted then attempts to establish).


It's in the portrayal of Ted Kennedy that Chappaquiddick crosses the line from historical reenactment to historical drama. Ironically, the film’s version of Ted is unlikely to please those who have the most heavily political points of view on either side. As quite ably portrayed by Jason Clarke, Ted Kennedy is neither a calculate sociopathic manipulator or a grief-stricken man in shock who blundered into some questionable decisions. Instead, he just did as he was told, with his occasional efforts at taking charge of the situation blowing up in his face and making the cover-up more difficult.  It’s frustrating for viewers who never really get answers to the question of why Kennedy took the actions he did. Indeed, the answer is that the film’s Kennedy did so because the real Kennedy did so. Those wanting to get dramatic answers from the movie about Ted or even Mary Jo, who pretty much remains a pleasant cipher, will be frustrated. The film also fails to take a stand on the fascinating voyeuristic issues of whether Ted had or tried to have a relation with Mary Jo, and even whether the entire party was simply a booty call for a group of well-to-do married men in a remote location with some attractive younger women. The answers to those questions, from the film, is a definitive maybe.


Of course, it’s impossible for 2018 audiences to view Chappaquiddick other than through the benefit of hindsight. The entire event is memorable in part for some fortuitous timing, as it occurred the weekend of the Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon, when, as Robert McNamara noted, America’s attention was elsewhere. It also took place at the tail end of a pre-Watergate journalistic era in which a prominent family like the Kennedys could greatly mold press coverage of a sensational event in a way that would be completely unheard of today. Chappaquiddick puts these events in sharp focus, and it does so through some solid yet surprisingly unspectacular work, both in front of and behind the camera. This film is no masterpiece, but it rises far above the level of what a History Channel docudrama of the events would, in all likelihood, have been. It’s a film worth seeing, if for nothing else, to note both the similarities and the differences, for better and worse, of American political life over the last 50 years.  

In this clip, Jason Clarke's team of fixers tells him the full extent of the trouble he is in.

Read other reviews of Chappaquiddick: 

Chappaquiddick (2017) on IMDb