JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass (2021) * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Oliver Stone

Narrated by: Oliver Stone, Donald Sutherland, Whoopi Goldberg

Let me be clear about Oliver Stone's 1991 masterwork JFK.   I wrote in my review of the film that it would be an amazing film even if not one word in it were true or no conspiracy to kill President Kennedy ever existed.   It captured a nightmarish sense of paranoia and distrust in the official version of events.  The Warren Commission concluded Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and that was that.   Many agreed, some did not.   Over the years, the conspiracy theories have grown in number as have the number of people who believe in them.   Stone weaved these beliefs into a striking array of visuals, names, and dates hurled at you so fast and furiously that you would have to duck.  

It is now nearly sixty years since Kennedy's assassination in Dallas.   The only things we seem to know for certain is that President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed, Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the crime, and two days Oswald himself was shot dead by Jack Ruby.   Everything else is up for debate.  The arguments have gone on for decades and will go on for decades more.   We will never know what truly happened.   Years have passed, nearly anyone who would be directly involved or witnesses are dead, and the waters have been so muddied that there is no way to ever know what happened...if you believe there is more to it than the official story.

JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass is Stone's documentary follow up to JFK.   It covers much of the same ground with some updates which occurred since the 1991 film's release.   A commission was created to allow for swifter declassification of documents related to the assassination.   Stone focuses on the bungled autopsy at Bethesda Medical Center, the entry wound to Kennedy's throat which was treated initially as an exit wound, Oswald's checkered past, and then Stone wildly espouses theories involving the CIA, FBI, the Mafia, and Cubans are intertwined in a labyrinthine plot which would grow large it could not likely be controlled or kept secret all these years.

I'm not reviewing Stone's beliefs, just the film in which they are presented.   Stone wants to reopen the conversation about Kennedy's murder with warmed-over arguments we've heard before.   JFK Revisited is simply an alternative way to present them.   Stone assertively states that "Conspiracy theories have become conspiracy facts,"   In his mind and in the minds of many, this is the case.   However, let's be honest.   Most conspiracy theories are presented as conspiracy facts anyway.   Stone has not been able to make another film about JFK which is as compelling and exciting as the initial film, whether you believe Stone's stories in any respect.