While the Christmas trailer season is overwhelmingly about next year's summer blockbusters, happily there's still room for some quality indie political drama. John Curran's Chappaquiddick revolves around the scandal involving Ted Kennedy in 1969. Jason Clarke, Kate Mara and Ed Helms star.
The title refers to the small Chappaquiddick Island, near Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, where senator Ted Kennedy (brother of John F.) accidentally drove his car off a bridge, leaving his assistant, Mary Jo Kopechne, to drown.
Kennedy did not report the accident until the next morning, and later received a two-month suspended jail sentence; the scandal was thought to have influenced Kennedy’s decision not to run for President.
Clarke is Kennedy in the film, with Mara as Kopechne, and Helms (in a rare non-comedic role) as Kennedy’s cousin Joe Gargan, who pressured Kennedy to call the police.
The scandal still stings the high-profile Kennedy dynasty: there were reports that the most famous of political families had attempted to quash the film. Those who have read the script claim it refuses to pull punches with the story. Ted Kennedy, incidentally, died in 2009.
Curran previously directed 2013’s superb Tracks. Chappaquiddick is out in the US in April, but we don't have a date in the UK so far.