November 22, 1963 was a pretty disappointing day for everyone in Dallas, TX. Especially, one would imagine, for President John F. Kennedy and his wife, but Parkland’s sympathies mostly lie with historical figures like emergency room doctor Jim Carrico (Zac Efron), Lee Harvey Oswald’s brother Robert (James Badge Dale) and amateur camera enthusiast Abraham Zapruder (Paul Giamatti). The film illustrates the assassination and its impact on an expansive cast of bystanders immediately prior to and just three days after the President’s assassination, which could be a pretty interesting story, if you think about it.
But I’m not sure anyone thought about Parkland enough, because the film fails to offer any interesting conclusions, dramatic revelations or even a modicum of character development for its many figures. Writer/director Peter Landesman approaches one of the most important historical bullet points in American history as it occurred, presenting the key moments (often in real time), and without judgment or historical context. But in doing so, Parkland leaves behind only a few intense scenes and decent performances, little else.
For instance, Jim Carrico is a young doctor who operates on John F. Kennedy, fighting a losing battle, and for a while during the extended surgery sequence Parkland feels like a fascinating period piece spin-off of “E.R.” But after he loses the President on the operating table – spoiler alert, I suppose – Carrico disappears for most of the film, returning only to operate on Lee Harvey Oswald, also with, shall we say, limited success. What has Carrico learned from these incredible experiences? How will they influence his life? Parkland never asks the questions, making one wonder why the hell it bothered making him a character in the first place.
If you’re going to strip away the larger historical context from an event like the Kennedy assassination, it would behoove you to make the lives of the “little people” you’re focusing on interesting before, during and after the events audiences already know about. While Zapruder’s mad dash to develop his fateful film and Robert Oswald’s increasing dread about his brother’s culpability (and his mother’s scarily delusional state) are briefly fascinating, they’re barely on screen for a few minutes prior to the start of their subplots. Without any proper set-up it’s difficult to determine exactly who they were at the beginning of this story and, therefore, why the place they end up matters, if only on a personal level.
Just as frustrating, Landesman briefly touches upon a government cover-up, and suggests (even brieflier) that the Secret Service’s emotional involvement with Kennedy might – might – have impeded the post-mortem investigation. It seems at times like Parkland is meant to be an up-close examination of how these three days went horribly wrong, thus explaining or at least justifying all the confusion and dissatisfying answers that came afterwards.
But then the film leaves out figures like Jack Ruby and even Lee Harvey Oswald, save for a brief, enigmatic prison visit that provides neither answers nor dramatic reversals. It’s not like Lee Harvey Oswald’s story is already well told, universally accepted and wrapped in a tidy history lesson bow. Leaving out these important parts of the events covered in Parkland leaves the film feeling incomplete, and not in a satisfying, “makes you think” sort of way.
If anything, Parkland seems to be suggesting that the Kennedy Assassination was a bad thing. Well spotted, Parkland. While I suppose it was noble to try to illustrate how the now legendary events of November 22, 1963 occurred without bias, the film lacks any of the narrative structure or character development that might have propelled it forward and instilled any real impact. Somehow, Parkland turns the John F. Kennedy assassination into “just a bunch of stuff that happened,” stranding audiences with aimless figures wrapped up in a situation that none of them will ever entirely understand. Which would have been just fine, if there had been some indication that the filmmakers, at least, understood it for them.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
