11/22/63 REVIEW
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time (18:30 UTC) on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas. I turned a year old a few hours later on November 23. Had I not come so early, my mom tells me, I might have been born in Massachusetts – an event that might have been devastating to my Vermont identity. This eight hour miniseries (11/22/1963) based on the novel by Stephen King, stars James Franco as Jake Epping, a high school English teacher from 2015 who goes back in time to try and prevent the assassination of JFK. Over the course of a three year period, he takes a job as an English teacher in a Texas high school and attempts to spy on Lee Harvey Oswald so as to determine if killing him would prevent the assassination from ever taking place. Alas, Jake discovers that history has a tenacious hold on events as they unfolded and fights back whenever he begins to draw closer to succeeding at his mission.
Week after week, the forces of fate conspire to frustrate his intentions. The closer he gets, the more “historical resistance” Jake experiences until 11/22/63 arrives. I won’t spoil the plot.
I highly enjoyed the series for a number of reasons.
One, I got to see what all the cars looked like when I was a year old. And what the music sounded like. And how people were wearing their hair, their suits, and their dapper hats.
Two, I liked the way that fate seems to fight to hang on to its original story but that it is not omnipotent against a tenacious will. IT is as though fate has a current that requires a rugged focus to alter. “Resistance to change is proportional to how much the future might be altered by any given act” Steven King wrote in the novel version of the story.
Three, it reminded me that even if you are involved in the most significant of historical events, what happens is never really quite as important to you as whether or not you found and got to keep love in your life.
Four, I learned a few things about JFK assassination conspiracy theories.
I recommend it.
Question for Comment: Where were you when the most significant public event of your lifetime took place?
Comments