Oswald's Ghost (2007)

There is no film of Oswald himself actually in the act of firing a gun at anything. There is no film of Oswald even carrying a gun that day.There is neither film nor any photograph of Oswald in or around Dealy Plaza at all, shooting or otherwise.There were no witnesses who saw Oswald himself shoot at the car (one witness saw someone shoot- but couldn't ID who).No witness put Oswald on the sixth floor of the building at the time of the shooting. Someone was there, but who?Oswald appeared in 3 or 4 separate police lineups after the shooting but nobody at these face-to-face viewings identified him as shooting anything in Dealy Plaza.Oswald was never tried in a court of law for any crimes committed on November 22, 1963. Oswald himself was murdered. He was assassinated.The Warren Commission postulated that there were two Lone Nuts- Oswald and Ruby. Even if you think they were nuts, there is little or no evidence that they were "Lone" nuts. They were both very talented at covering their shady associations (and they had many).Thousands of CIA documents were released in the 90's but with huge blacked-out spaces. No less than Tom Brokaw of NBC said (I believe in 1999) that there may be "a million" documents still secret, not to be released until as late as 2050.No film or witnesses against Oswald. No trial of Oswald. Still-secret documents. It always amazes me that Peter Jennings or anyone can be so certain that there WASN'T a conspiracy, or that so-called "buffs" can be so certain that there WAS one.

I was in the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper's library when I heard the news of Kennedy's assassination. Thus began a great mystery in the U.S. and around the world that continues to this day. Trillions of words and thousands of books have been written about the assassination, and that alone tells us that there is no one satisfactory theory about why or how Kennedy was murdered.Robert Stone's documentary is both odd and disjointed. As someone else on this board has already noted, director Stone starts off with a reasonably balanced view of the assassination, leads us through various conspiracy theories and talking heads, and then, boom, just like that, in the final 10 minutes, allows noted author Norman Mailer to wrap it up for us: Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.Mailer offers his 'evidence' more from a novelist's point of view than from one of evidence. Mailer's 'proof': Oswald was living in desperate straits, he was frustrated but bright and articulate, he had delusions of grandeur, he wanted a permanent place in American history, he worked in a building on the parade route, and voila: it all came together. Director Stone ends his movie focused on Mailer's fanciful artistic interpretation of events (Oswald's ghost knows the answers, but a ghost will not tell us). It's quizzical to say the least.Mailer (and ultimately filmmaker Stone himself) leaves out a glaring contradiction that still stares at conspiracy theorists today. It's a glaring contradiction not wrapped in Maileresque language: the famous Zapruder film (now digitalized for even more vivid inspection), which clearly shows that Kennedy had the top of his head blown off by a shot from the FRONT, not from the Texas Schoolbook Depository in the rear, where Lee Harvey Oswald was purportedly firing three shots in six seconds.It is peculiar that Mailer, Stone, Elliott Jay Epstein (author of a book on the murder), former student radical-activist Todd Gatlin, and disgraced former Senator Gary Hart have all attached themselves to the 'single gunman' theory. Oswald may well have been involved up to his skinny little neck, but it still doesn't explain Zapruder's remarkable film, which has nothing to do with Oswald the Man, but merely frightening evidence that something else was happening on that fateful day in November 1963. That 'something else' has never been explained, and this film basically ignores it.This film ultimately leaves the viewer with more questions than answers. Exactly what we needed: even more questions about the Kennedy assassination.'Oswald's Ghost' left me with this uncomfortable feeling that too many people are desperate to put this whole messy business behind us. It is, after all, much easier, and much neater, to blame it all on a single shooter who also happened to be crazy.

OSWALD'S GHOST got a brief theatrical release on it's way to an American EXPERIENCE broadcast on PBS. There is little to recommend for seeing it on the big screen as most of its footage is either archival stock that was meant to be shown on TV in the first place, or typical talking heads interviews from the present day.The film goes over familiar territory for anyone even vaguely familiar with the JFK assassination. Some of the talking heads such as Mark Lane and Dan Rather trot out stories most have seen before. More interesting are individuals like former Presidential Candidate Gary Hart and Norman Mailer who, rightly or wrongly, give us their insights into the matter (more on Mailer later). For the first hour or so, Director Robert Stone tries to portray a sort of kaleidescope (a word used in the documentary) of the Assassination, the official and conspiracy theories and a view of how it affected people of the immediate and subsequent generations. On that level, it sort of keeps one's interest. Some of the footage is less familiar than others, and it's edited together competently enough. Gary Lionelli's music itself is evocative, but, unfortunately, Stone mixes it too high and he drowns out some of the dialog in the process. Worse, much of the archival footage would be more effective without the intrusive music. *** Possible SPOILER AREA ***And, then, in the last 20 minutes, Stone completely flips the film on its end. Gone is the dispassionate, relatively even-handed approach and he gives the film over completely to one side of the argument. Norman Mailer and HIS theory of the assassination come to dominate the final section of the documentary. Mailer's conclusions become the film's conclusions. In light of Mailer's subsequent death, the film could just as easily been called, "Mailer's Ghost". And, then, it ends abruptly.Without knowing more about Stone (his surname an irony in itself that even he can't avoid as he includes behind-the-scenes footage of OLIVER Stone directing his film JFK!), it's impossible to know if this method of seemingly pulling the rug out from the viewer was an intentional act of the old in-and-out sucker punch, or if it naturally evolved that way through the editing process. In either case, it considerably weakens the film - setting all prejudice one way or another about one's particular view of the JFK assassination aside. Not only does it come out of nowhere, but it tarnishes what was good about that first hour.

I saw this today and I was impressed with some of the archival footage and some of the interviews given. It's worth checking out if you're interested and/or have some knowledge on the case. I guess I would have liked to have heard more from Mailer and more on Oswald. I do think they gave some good information on a few details JFK missed. This is an informative and sometimes stylish documentary, worth checking out, the only reason I won't give more details on some of the plot points is for the fact that they had a lot to do with the conspiracy and a lot of them were red herrings. What this documentary does is put a few things into perspective, i.e. Oswalds motive, Dan Rathers comment saying the presidents head went forward, etc. My reason for giving this a ten was simply because the rating's too low, it deserves a 7 out of 10. Recommended.