JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass

Written by Taylor Baker

78/100

30 years have passed since Oliver Stone’s Kevin Costner led film JFK was released. In JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass Stone returns to the assassination of JFK as documentarian. Wherein he interrogates and seeks answers to what actually happened on November 22nd, 1963. What the scope of the conspiracy, intimidation, and rewriting of facts was. And most pointedly as X said in JFK 30 years ago, “Why? Why was Kennedy killed? Who benefited? Who has the power to cover it up? Who?” Stone leans on the voices of Whoopi Goldberg and Donald Sutherland who played X in JFK as narrators of various facts, elicit operations, and the narrative threads. Occasionally chiming in himself as interviewer of various secondary individuals who had spoken with first-hand participants to the events on and surrounding that fateful day. 

The central villain of Stone’s film is the Warren Commission Report, which he deliberately and factually renders corrupt and unconscionable over the course of the film. Stone in conjunction with his editing team and legendary cinematographer Robert Richardson coalesce a presentation of previously censored testimony, intimidated sources, photographic evidence, thorough spatial renderings, and Stone’s interviews of these secondary resources and experts to leave little doubt in the viewers’ mind that the official narrative is definitively and without question bullshit. It comparatively shows what appears to be a doctored photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald in his backyard against two original photos. Then details the purchase order of his rifle, and the brackets for the shoulder strap in the original photographs being incorrect in relation to the murder weapon of JFK. Pieces of evidence like this, self-admitted intimidation by federal agents, and covered up eyewitness testimony leave one frustrated, but thankful to Stone for assembling an easily digestible, high quality, dummy-proof piece of journalism that ultimately provides more questions than answers.

JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass Trailer

JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass is streaming on Showtime.

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