Stream It Or Skip It: ‘JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass’ on Showtime, a Documentary in Which Oliver Stone Leads Us Back Into the Weeds

This week’s premier rabbit-holer is Showtime’s JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, a documentary in which Oliver Stone reexamines the John F. Kennedy assassination, 30 years after he stirred the pot with Oscar-nominated drama JFK. The firebrand filmmaker cites fresh, revelatory information as the core reason for diving back into the subject matter, so fans of quasi-history, take note. Stone follows up his rightfully critically torched four-part Vladimir Putin sit-down with this, a two-hour reiteration of the grandaddy of all conspiracy theories, which, thank all the misc. deities out there in the nether, he reportedly cut down from four. So in the face of withering credibility, Stone participates in crass 1990s revivalism, as only he can. Hooray for us?

JFK REVISITED: THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: So you know, Stone is ONLY ASKING QUESTIONS HERE, because who knows if he ever comes to any assertive conclusions. Before getting to some uberdramatic voiceover by yeah-sure-why-not narrator Whoopi Goldberg and a bevy of talking heads shot to look like they’re EMERGING FROM THE SHADOWS, Stone assembles a tense montage of archival footage in which flustered news anchors break the terrible news of Kennedy’s murder and stunned citizens share their reactions. It wraps with a vintage clip in which one commentator says, “This murder now is the most thoroughly documented crime in American history, and for those who care to pursue it down to the last detail, it’s all there.” Don’t mind if we do!

Next we see Stone himself, wandering through the fateful site, Dallas’ Dealey Plaza, looking like the grimmest attendee at America’s funeral. It’s time for a re-re-re-re-re-re-reinvestigation of the JFK assassination, the filmmaker insists, because a lot of new documentation has been uncovered that’ll further obfuscate the rapidly fading details of an event that happened 58 years ago. (I’m paraphrasing here.) Then he begins firing away with pieces of information that make us feel like we’re being riddled with… something. Magic bullets? Yeah, magic bullets. Names and faces and terminology from JFK and the episode of Seinfeld with Keith Hernandez in it comes flooding back: Jack Ruby, Zapruder film, second shooter, Warren Report, etc. etc. And if you’re really into the excruciating minutiae of government bureaucracy, the sequence about the chain of custody of forensic evidence — complete with accompanying graphical representations — will get you all hot and bothered. There’s also a fascinating excursion into strap attachment points on rifles, and boy oh boy, don’t get me started about strap attachment points on rifles, because I’ll never stop!

Backed by commentary from experts, some of whom wrote actual books, Stone takes all the old stuff we should already know but probably don’t recall and ties it in with documents that have been declassified since he made JFK — and we get to actually see some of these documents in all their block-of-text glory, with yellow graphical highlighter showing us the important bits. Halfway through, Stone shifts gears from the How to the Why, and we get a mini-bio of Lee Harvey Oswald and the revelation that there were two previous plots to kill JFK, and therefore two additional patsies. The motive for assassinating the president comes into vague view with a bunch of rigamarole about political conflict — leftie JFK didn’t want to go into Vietnam, while righties leading the FBI and CIA were so dead set on it, they surely manipulated every little fragment of everything that occurred prior to the event and hence, therefore rolling the snowball of government distrust down the hill to the modern-day threat to the core values of American democracy.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: JFK Revisited looks like an Errol Morris doc (The Fog of War, The Unknown Known) mixed with History Channel fodder. Hint: Wait until Stone releases the four-hour version, pair it with the 206-minute director’s cut of JFK and make a day of it.

Performance Worth Watching: Whoever it was who wrote an entire book about JFK’s head wound. That’s a level of commitment few of us will ever truly comprehend.

Memorable Dialogue: Stone’s biggest whopper: “In regards to the JFK assassination, conspiracy theories are now conspiracy facts.”

Sex and Skin: Nothing to inspire your arousal here, save for the graphic discussion of those sexy, sexy strap attachment points on rifles.

Our Take: Hey, anybody wanna be duped? Nobody likes to be duped — by alleged shadowy conspirators, or perpetuators of conspiracy theories. So where are we gonna land with this one? On Occam’s razor, or in the weeds with Stone? And he doesn’t just take us into the weeds — this documentary’s all weeds. I’m glazing over. I need coffee and a compass. Someone point me in the general direction of the sky, please.

Only those who’ve read the book about JFK’s head wound will be able to differentiate new and pre-chewed information here. (Quick side note — have the graphic photographs of JFK’s cadaver that Stone shows us been seen before now? They’re disturbing; consider yourself warned.) It’s hard to tell which of Stone’s talking heads are credible and objective, or if they’ve been plucked from the cadre of JFK obsessives to support Stone’s claims. Claims that never come to a cohesive conclusion, by the way. Questions lead to more questions that lead to more questions, and the alleged web of deceit gets so complex and involves so many individuals, the film acts against its own arguments, and assertions about conspiracies begin to crumble.

Stone’s inquiry is dense and undeniably passionate, and he’s overturned enough reasonably compelling discrepancies in testimony and documentation — ballistics, autopsies, photographers of autopsies, stopping short of dentists of photographers of autopsies, but only just — to raise a few eyebrows. It’s enough to make one conclude that the film’s less of a convincing argument that JFK’s murder was an inside job, more of a testament to the incompetence and fallibility of investigatory committees like the Warren Commission. What’s that other razor? Hanlon’s? You know — never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Our Call: Will you be knocked BACK and to the LEFT by JFK Revisited? BACK and to the LEFT? BACK and to the LEFT? Nah. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.

Stream JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass on Showtime