The assassination of John F. Kennedy still remains one of the more surreal and tragic events in the history of mankind. On the 22nd of November, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, Kennedy was killed in front of a crowd of 400-500 people as his motorcade drove through Dealey Plaza. His death rocked the nation, and transformed the cultural landscape of the United States of America in a way which would not be felt until 9/11.
His killer (according to four concurrent government investigations) was Lee Harvey Oswald, a Communist and former Marine who defected to the Soviet Union and later returned. He is believed to have killed Kennedy with a rifle from a book depository building where he worked. Two days after his arrest, Oswald was himself killed while in police custody (and in full sight of the worlds press) by night club owner, Jack Ruby. The bizarre circumstances in the deaths of Kennedy and Oswald have raised numerous questions and even more conspiracy theories. Yet the main question which Robert Stone's Oswald's Ghost asks is: How could someone as inconsequential as Lee Harvey Oswald have killed someone as consequential as John F. Kennedy?
Stone approaches this question and many more in a very well presented, even handed, and informative documentary which focuses on the subject of Oswald's participation in the Kennedy assassination.
Stone interviews various experts and personalities who all offer various points of view. Legendary American novelist Norman Mailer, along with journalists Dan Rather and Edward Jay Epstein discuss why they believe Oswald acted alone; Conspiracy theorists Mark Lane and Josiah Thompson analyse a never ending number of assassination theories ranging from rogue CIA elements, to Communists nations Cuba and the Soviet Union, to the Italian/American Mafia.; and student activists of the time now speak (in their glorious paranoid splendour) of the power structure in America, and how they believe it influenced not only JFK's assassination, but also the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, the war in Vietnam, and the rise of the Nixon administration and his abuse of power through intelligence operatives.
Also featured is the investigation into Kennedy's death by the Warren commission and their single bullet hypothesis (or "magic bullet theory") which sealed Oswald's fate; New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison's investigation, which is highly criticized by Epstein, Lane and Thompson; President Lyndon Johnson's own doubts that Oswald was the only killer; the claims by Oswald's eccentric mother that he was an FBI agent; and the reveal that Oswald unsuccessfully attempted to kill radical right wing southerner General Edwin Walker with a rifle.
With the title Oswald's Ghost, I was hoping for an expose into the life of Oswald, perhaps one of the more intriguing American figures in recent American history. Instead, what Stone offers is another look into the Kennedy assassination and how Oswald - presuming without a shadow of doubt that he was the man who pulled the trigger - managed to leave such a mark in the history books.
Stone uses a plenitude of footage including the now infamous Zapruder film, footage of Oswald after his arrest pleading for legal assistance, his subsequent murder, and various other shots of Kennedy's motorcade driving through Dealey Plaza. Also featured are a number of tape recorded conversations of Lyndon Johnson enquiring about the status of the Warren Commission, Jack Ruby post-arrest, and an eerie confession by a witness under hypnosis.
For anyone who has seen Oliver Stone's JFK - the magnificent ode to the conspiracy theories surrounding Kennedy's assassination - then a lot of what is said in Oswald's Ghost will not come across as shocking or informative. The truth is there has been so much written and said about this event (both for and against Oswald as Kennedy's assassin), and nothing new is said here. But at least with Oswald's Ghost both sides of the debate can be heard at the same time, a move which will help the viewer form an honest opinion having heard all of the evidence, and not just the impassioned ravings of one side.