In 1969, Ted Kennedy (Jason Clarke) was at a summer party just off Martha’s Vineyard. That night, a drunken car accident from a small bridge in Chappaquiddick left Mary Jo Kopechne (Kate Mara) dead. She was a former Robert Kennedy aid and an intricate part of the Kennedy family devotees. Ted Kennedy was behind the wheel. Like the Kennedy family needed another tragedy following the assassination of Bobby the year prior?
Joseph Gargan (Ed Helm) is Kennedy’s aid who insists the morning after – in what feels like a blip of ‘The Hangover’ moment – that he must report the incident. But Helm’s character is far from the goofy ‘Stu’ in his past comedies. Instead he resonates a moral code, and an alliance to the Kennedy name, and, shows us his dramatic chops.
But while the film gives a drawn out thirty-minute opening on the drowning and what led up to the incident, the story turns out to be the emotional struggles in Ted’s life. The conscious moral obligations to so many. As the last living of the four brothers – Joe, Jack and Bobby all destined for greater things – Ted grapples with how to live up to their names. How to be THEE Kennedy that his father, Joseph, aspired his son to be…to carry on the torch for his dead brothers.
The movie itself shows the many challenges of its time. Telephones and switchboards, collect calls and good-ole-boy political handshakes to cover up situations (like the fact that Ted’s driver’s license had expired.) Even an astronaut’s first moon walk distracts headlines from Ted’s accident…’Armstrong on the Moon!’
But the nagging for Teddy to be the great-white-hope to his people and his family pushes through the premise. With reference to Bobby, Ted says, “the expectations of my entire life didn’t change the moment he hit the ground.” And so the film becomes the angst of carrying that legacy before, during and after. Jack and Bobby cast a long shadow – one that Ted lived in every day.
But did Ted’s chance to define his legacy die with Mary Jo? The answer is ‘no.’ Ted finally confronts his own father with the fact that “his brothers were great men because of who they were…not who [Joe] was.” Perhaps this unnecessary revisit of a tragedy has one shining ray of necessity. The great man Ted Kennedy became in his life’s obstacles and challenges.
This “Lion of the Senate” was not about political ambition, or opportunity, but about integrity. His reverberating “I have to do what’s right” in being truthful of Mary Jo’s death, showed us he wouldn’t be defined by his flaws. As he says to his father, Joe, “I’m the only son you’ve got left,” before going on national TV on all three major networks (and against his Father’s will) to ask his people if he should resign the senate.
As we know from history, Ted went on to be one of the longest running, respected and most beloved Senators of his time. 3 tiaras