Seberg (2020)

 Score: 3 / 5

The fascinating life of Jean Seberg would surely be difficult to dramatize, and this movie tries hard to make it deeply relevant to contemporary movie stars entering the political sphere. Rather than explore her early failures -- though it does reference her early scarring in Saint Joan -- and her profound fame in France, Seberg delves into her public persona, her romantic private life, and how the two were utterly impossible to maintain in the late '60s and early '70s. As such, the film struggles to find a balance between contemporary concerns and the accuracy of its subject's psychology.

The story of Seberg as dramatized here picks up as she is returning to Hollywood from Paris, where she lived in an apparently open marriage with her husband, raising her daughter. Acclaimed as one of the greatest actresses living in Europe, the Iowa-born young woman hopes to revitalize her American film career. Much to her agent's dismay, she reacts poorly to blatant racism shown to Black people on her trip back to the states, and even poses with Black Panthers in support of their cause. Suddenly the FBI takes notice of the French New Wave star, heating up as she works with and financially supports Hakim Jamal (an underused Anthony Mackie), a civil rights leader, with whom she develops a romantic affair.

Eventually, J. Edgar Hoover personally orders surveillance, phone tapping, invasive photographs, and a general smear campaign on Seberg. It is within this development that director Benedict Andrews and his writers seem most interested, and the bulk of the film's runtime is devoted to her paranoia and spiraling equilibrium as a result of the constant scrutiny and publicizing of her private life. You have to assume this focus comes from Seberg's second husband, who famously accused the FBI for contributing to her death, which is considered to be most likely suicide. It's interesting, because this is arguably already the primary reason anyone would remember the name of Jean Seberg -- in association with the cruel and unusual tactics of the FBI's COINTELPRO.

So it's an odd choice for cinematic adaptation because it's too obvious. Kristen Stewart -- whose 2020 was perhaps better than all ours combined, with three big titles between this, Underwater, and Happiest Season, that gave her more drama to explore than her entire career thus far -- performs with nuance and emotional intelligence here, though her quiet demeanor doesn't offer much opportunity for clear expression. It's a smart move while portraying someone fairly mysterious, despite all we know about her life. What's odd is the way Seberg's writers work so hard to make her a dynamic character; in reality, Jean was already active in civil rights causes while a teenager, but the film makes her out to be a spoiled celebrity searching for a deeper purpose in maturity. Further, the film seems determined to compare Seberg with Joan of Arc, her early famed role, especially as she descends to the brink of madness under the intense pressures of federal scrutiny.

Thankfully, the brilliant Rachel Morrison makes up for the screenplay's problems in cinematography that almost made me wish the film had been silent. Shifting from lightly-colored pastels in early scenes to increasingly darker hues, Morrison chromatically explores the encroaching shadows of what becomes a political thriller. As Jean grows paranoid and afraid of those shadows, Morrison drains color from the film to both sanitize its clinical view of her and to put us in her mind as the joys of life are stripped from her. And yet, I wonder about the efficacy of portraying Seberg's story as a sort of fame-induced tragedy. Surely in our age of information and international tampering with democratic processes, this film could have done so much better than to try and -- I might be going on a limb here -- defend the FBI through a conflicted agent (Jack O'Connell). He's contrasted with the other main FBI agent (Vince Vaughn), who is almost sociopathically uncaring in his intent to stalk and malign Seberg. This cartoonish caricature didn't sit well with me, considering the similarly conflicted role of the FBI in the last four years, and I don't think the filmmakers here are concerned about the bizarre messages they are coding.