CHAPAQUICDDICK  2.5***

      

 “Chappaquiddick is based on the real life incident in July 1969 involving the death of Mary Jo Kopechne and the events following. Basically, Mary Jo (a former secretary for Robert Kennedy), died when Senator Ted Kennedy crashed the car he was driving into a small wooden bridge late at night and the car flipped into the water. He escaped although you never find out how. She dies, and the  tragedy was greatly compounded due to what happened next---Kennedy quickly left the scene and failed to report the incident until the next day…more than 8 hours after the event.  It's unclear whether Kennedy actually made attempts to save Kopechne himself (he maintained that he did) but he did go get his friends, Joe Gargan and Paul Markham, fairly soon after who did dive into the water but were unsuccessful in extracting the Mary Jo.

If Kennedy had an excuse for not contacting the police immediately ,certainly his behavior the next day was disgraceful. The movie shows how Kennedy's efforts to cover up the incident were quite involved, from his initial plan to tell the authorities that Kopechne was driving, that a doctor prescribed sedatives for him for a non-existent concussion and then his wearing a neck brace at the Kopechne funeral, attempting to play the part of the victim.

Even more fascinating is the gathering of a Kennedy "inner circle". The power players included Robert McNamara and Ted Sorensen and it shows them trying to manage/manipulate the authorities and the press coverage.

The film can best be classified as a docudrama and  sticks to the chronology of events that occurred.  The problem with this approach is that the narrative  becomes a dry rehash of the events that transpired. The movie does put its own spin on things and ends up drawing a complex but negative portrait of Ted Kennedy (played  convincingly by Jason Clarke, a dead ringer for the Senator).