Oliver Stone’s “JFK”

by J.D. Lafrance

The assassination of American President John F. Kennedy is a watershed event in American history. For Baby Boomers and beyond, it has been the fuel that provoked them to question their own beliefs and those of their government. Yet, for such a highly publicized affair, there is still a myriad of uncertainties that surround the “actual” incident. Countless works of fiction and non-fiction have been created concerning the subject, but have done little in aiding our understanding of the assassination and the events surrounding it. Oliver Stone’s film, JFK (1991), depicts the events leading up to –and – after the assassination like a densely constructed puzzle, complete with jump cuts and multiple perspectives. Stone’s film presents the assassination as a powerful event constructed by its conspirators to create confusion with its contradictory evidence, to then bury this evidence in the Warren Commission Report, which in turn manifests multiple interpretations of key figures like Lee Harvey Oswald. JFK offers a structured examination of the conspiracy from multiple points of view where everything fits together to reveal a larger, more frightening picture, implicating the most powerful people in the United States government.

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