Oliver Stone Jfk Analysis

Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991) does an excellent job depicting Jim Garrison’s breakdown of what he thought happened during the assassination of JFK. The scene itself incorporates Garrison’s narration (played by Kevin Costner), fictional reenactments of the JFK assassination and real footage to bring home the logic Garrison was arguing. Through aspects of continuity editing, audio continuity, and complexity editing, Stone makes sure that all the pieces fall in line to create a coherent 4 minute scene.
Making sure a scene practices good continuity editing is key to creating a scene that makes sense. Every movie has to organize which shot comes next and for how long. If shots aren’t put together in a logical fashion, it will be hard for the audience
The first and foremost most conventional way to tell a story as it happens in time or in a sequential analytic montage. Garrison does this throughout his depiction of the JFK assassination, for example JFK makes the turn from Main onto Houston before he gets shot so we see JFK make the turn while being aimed down the scopes of the shooters. The sequence of shots show the car making the turn. This is told in this way to highlight the main event of the story (the events leading up to JFK’s assassination). Another way of telling a story is through a sectional analytic montage. This is where the same moment in time is playing over and over from different perspectives. This is to emphasize an important moment in a film. Most notably in this scene when JFK is shot in the head the moment is replayed from the perspective of the shooter the perspective of Zapruder, the perspective of the crowd and many other camera angles focused on JFK. This enhances the climax of the scene and really emphasizes Garrison’s point is that the footage shows JFK moving his head back and to the left, which suggests he was shot from the grassy knoll and not from the