Chappaquiddick examines 1969 tragedy and political cover-up
By
Patrick Martin
21 April 2018
Directed by John Curran; written by Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan
This is a good film, not a great one, but given the cultural and political context in which it has been produced, Chappaquiddick is a considerable achievement. The film was written and cast well before Donald Trump was viewed as a serious presidential prospect. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival late last summer, but only went into general distribution in the United States in early April.
The subject matter, as the title suggests, is the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, who was taking part in a reunion for former campaign aides of Robert F. Kennedy on the weekend of July 18-20, 1969, on Chappaquiddick, an islet adjacent to the larger island of Martha’s Vineyard, off the southern coast of Massachusetts.
Kopechne, 28, was riding late at night in a car driven by Senator Edward Kennedy which went off an open wooden bridge and plunged into the water. Kennedy escaped, under circumstances that have never been made clear, but Kopechne drowned. Kennedy later pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, and was sentenced to two months in jail (suspended) and a year’s probation.
The film deals with the accident in its first 20 minutes, and devotes its main attention to the efforts by Kennedy and his family and entourage to manage the political uproar that ensued. Chappaquiddick limits its focus to a single week—from the Friday of Kopechne’s tragic death to the following Friday, when Kennedy made his guilty plea, then gave a televised address to the nation in an effort to salvage his political career.
Given that the events in question are intrinsically political, it does little credit to director…