I knew I was in trouble even before I bought the ticket. Jackie, without an exclamation point? What the hell? How am I going to survive a movie not called Jackie!?

I knew I was in trouble even before the movie had begun, as I was treated to five, FIVE, low-rent company, high-cost slugs in front of the actual film, with each precious enterprise, after their CG nonsense, getting an additional credit two minutes later. While I appreciate the extra four minutes of not having to watch the film, there were a lot of eager hands waiting to get their prints on this lifeless wikipedia page.

That there is no exclamation point to be found in the titular Jackie would be sad enough, but there are no ellipses either. When Ms. Portman says, rather early on, ‘A moment by moment account, that’s what you’re looking for’, it is a threat indeed made good. It’s the story of a woman who plans a funeral, then changes her mind about how it should look, then…changes her mind back. The twist? That she did it all for her ego. It is a movie without point or character. But at least the music sucks.

In the end, she’s healed from the loss so much that…she can go window shopping again. Yay?

That being said, there could be a story here, that the mundane details of planning the a state memorial could have become high politics writ small, with each detail having a larger global implication. Instead, told entirely from Ms. Portman’s perspective, we are treated to her surprisingly quotidian experience, as exemplified by the line: ‘They think it’s a security risk. Jackie, they think it’s a security risk.’ That’s as much drama as you’re going to get: someone repeating a line from another character in the same room.

Don’t see it.

But.

There is one thing to say. Seeing everything means I saw Silence, which I loved, and had no business loving, Or seeing for that matter. But it’s not just about the unexpected rewards, but the real philosophy that every movie – nearly every movie – has a moment of truth, or wonder, or even fun in it.

In this case, I was watching Jackie right after the very sad news that Mr. John Hurt had died. And there he is was, in what was probably his last role. I was depressed, as it initially felt I was watching the considerably less interesting art-house version of The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu 

But whether by the actor himself…scratch the ‘whether’, it was him…there was redemption in this priest, who comforts Ms. Portman with a grander sense of God and grief, that the works of God are in the blind man, even before Jesus healed him. It made me feel I was watching a tribute to Mr. Hurt himself, as unintentional and certainly undeserved as that may have been.

Nothing, no movie, no person, no moment is one thing. That a movie this awful has a moment of grace is a tribute. To grace. The movie gets nothing from me.