Seberg

The fight for social revolution requires the harmony of many voices working as one.   Benedict Andrews’ SEBERG revisits this theme more than once.   They’re words of wisdom Hakim Jamal (Anthony Mackie) imparts upon the bright-eyed and determined Jean (Kristen Stewart); unfortunately, the biopic never fully commits to its own viewpoint.  There are too many voices speaking at once, and with none of the necessary conviction.

In the late 1960s, Jean Seberg, an American actress and darling of the French New Wave movement, splits her time between Hollywood and Paris in an attempt to balance work and family life.  Her director-novelist husband Romain Gary (Yvan Attal) accepts the demands of her career and watches over their young son in her absence.  In a seeming moment of serendipity, she meets Hakim on a flight and becomes immediately captivated by his desire for true social change.   “How can I help?” she asks, willing to lend both her position of privilege and her check book.  She’s entranced by Hakim’s charisma and swept up in the movement’s power.

Almost immediately, the United States government – closely observing Hakim’s activities – takes notice.  They consider Jean a frivolous fly in the ointment; “maybe she likes dark meat off the bone” a boorish FBI agent (Vince Vaughn, perfectly cast) notes to his younger partner Jack Solomon (Jack O’Connell).  It soon becomes clear that Jean has put her full weight behind her words.  When she invites the Black Panthers to a celebrity fund-raiser at her mansion, Hoover himself identifies her as a threat to American institutional power.  From there, her life descends into chaos.

Mackie’s Hakim is a character ripe with potential depths to plumb; unfortunately, he’s positioned as little more than a love interest on the periphery.  There’s no deep-dive into his ascent within the Black Power movement, particularly in regards to the Nation of Islam’s internal politics and the events that inspired him to found the Malcom X Foundation in Compton, California.  We’re shown the emotional and mental toll that the ever-present fear of surveillance takes on Jean, but we aren’t shown that Hakim and his family were similar targets.  “You’re a tourist”, Hakim’s wife, Dorothy (Zazie Beetz) tells Jean.  As a white woman of unusual privilege, she can never truly understand the exhaustion that comes with simply existing as a black person in America.  It’s an important subject given no further exploration.

A coda at the end of the film informs us that Hoover’s illegal program, COINTELPRO, spied on U.S. citizens.  There’s no mention of how this seed planted by Hoover directly contributed to the eventual dissolution of the Black Panther Party in 1982.  Instead, we’re given the redemption arc of (white) FBI Agent Solomon, introduced as a great admirer of Steve Rogers (a sickly young man given an experimental super soldier serum, enabling him to fight Fascists and stand up for the oppressed).  Like Rogers, Solomon “signed up” to make a difference and protect American ideals, but soon comes to realize that the agency he works for has more in common with Rogers’ foes.

Solomon’s partner represents everything rotten in the core of America and its power structure: he’s racist, controlling of his wife and daughter, prone to violent outbursts—all the worst elements of toxic masculinity.  Yet Solomon doesn’t work up the courage to call him out on his despicable behavior, electing to sidestep it instead.  Even after his ultimate grand gesture of penance, Solomon never truly confronts the evils of the FBI head-on.

Kristen Stewart does all she can to breathe new life into the tired “woman descends into a spiral of paranoia while everyone else questions her sanity” trope.  She’s so magnetic that it’s impossible to look away whenever she occupies the screen; she deftly conveys the quiet pain of Jean’s past traumas (an accident caused by negligence on the set of Otto Preminger’s ST JOAN) and the ongoing agony of her private life’s public exposure.  If only SEBERG looked deeper, such as which formative events of her upbringing in Marshalltown, Iowa, led her to become someone deeply invested in radical social change.  But what can you expect out of a film that wastes Margaret Qualley in a “wife emotionally shut out of her husband’s silent turmoil” role and gives us a slight, surface-level exploration of a grave and critical moment in our nation’s history?