I wasn’t 20 when I saw the jfk by Oliver Stone. Without hindsight and without any critical spirit, I adhered to all the theories illustrated in this film which wanted to shed light on the assassination of American President John F. Kennedy, a historical shock of which I knew almost nothing at the time. era.
Posted at 7:15 a.m.
Kennedy’s death, which remains scandalous and nebulous, is somewhat the mother of conspiracy theories, and the jfk by Oliver Stone is a masterpiece, no matter what you think of it. As it is not a documentary, it is the magic of cinema that operates. I’ve never come closer to paranoia than when Donald Sutherland, playing an anonymous informant high up in the Secret Service hierarchy, explains to Jim Garrison (played by Kevin Costner) the military-industrial complex at work behind the most famous murder of the XXe century. The spectator experiences this as a great moment of revelation.
Suddenly, everything lights up; we are the puppets of a diabolical machine that pulls the strings all over the planet. From this moment, WE KNOW. You don’t even need to do your research…
My friends and I watched jfk a dozen times at least, adding the long version of the director, and when Kevin Coster speaks directly to the camera at the end of his plea, when he tells us “it’s up to you” ( to demand the truth with a capital V), the effect was so strong that we were almost ready to go to Washington to demonstrate.
Since this film, the assassination of JFK has been analyzed from every angle, several theories supported by Oliver Stone have been attacked, but he never let go, since he deepened his obsession by making the documentary JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass presented at Cannes last year and the miniseries JFK: Destiny Betrayedwhich I admit I haven’t seen, because my interest has waned over time and I have more and more difficulty following Oliver Stone’s thoughts.
But if I was in Quebec this week, I might have gone to listen to the filmmaker’s great interview with Jean-François Lépine at Le Diamant, on the sidelines of the Quebec City Film Festival (FCVQ). Out of curiosity. Fingers crossed that this respected journalist asks the right questions. Because Oliver Stone is the director in particular of Platoon, Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July, jfk and Nixonbut also the one who conducted hours of admiring interviews with Vladimir Putin for the needs of the series Conversations with Mr Putin. A friend reminded me that Oliver Stone collaborated in 2016 on the film Ukraine on Fireconsidered pro-Russian propaganda by several specialists, and which pro-Putin Internet users are happy to share.
I have some concerns, however, after reading an article from the Sun about this great interview entitled “Québec meets Oliver Stone”. Jean-François Lépine recognizes that the man is controversial. “I said to myself: ‘What am I going to do in this, why am I going to interview this guy?’ Sun. But Putin is not the first autocratic figure he venerates. Because it’s veneration, the attitude he has towards these people. He did this with [Fidel] Castro and it’s always the same pattern. With Putin, it’s much more elaborate. That’s four hours of results. »
Then he adds: “I am not for refusing to do interviews with people because they have done X or Y. You have to see the work as a whole. He is someone who is still highly respected. He lost, unfortunately, a bit of that aura, because of certain things. He is also the victim of a current woke. »
I don’t know if Oliver Stone is the victim of a “current woke “, but since the start of the war in Ukraine, we have canceled things for much less than that. For example, the concert by young Russian pianist Alexandre Malofeev at the OSM last March. Rolling out the red carpet to the filmmaker as we are doing this week in Quebec is something quite strange, not to say indecent, while Quebec has been welcoming Ukrainian refugees who are fleeing their devastated country for weeks.
I know Oliver Stone’s filmography quite well, but I’m far from being an expert on Russian politics and the war in Ukraine. On this, we need information more than disinformation, and Oliver Stone has never claimed to be an objective journalist, he films what interests him personally, but he has never been shy to openly criticize the media . Is he coming to Quebec only to talk about cinema or will he also talk about his convictions? I dare to hope that Jean-François Lépine, who was a foreign correspondent for a long time, will not have the complacency that Oliver Stone was reproached for in his talks with Putin. Because in his case, we cannot even evoke the argument according to which the man should be separated from the work: his positions are part of his work, and they must be questioned.