The JFK Image by Cimpean Raluca Lucia;

Author:Cimpean, Raluca Lucia;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

This option is not dramatized in Thirteen Days, and rightly so, as it would have diluted the plot and spoiled its most climactic moment. Instead, the script includes a partial inaccuracy that has more melodramatic appeal. The episode refers to JFK’s indignation that the Jupiter missiles in Turkey have not been removed despite his explicit orders, and therefore constitute an intimidating weapon. In actuality, the missiles did not belong to the United States, and so were not President Kennedy’s to dismantle. Moreover, Turkey was a key NATO ally and its opposition to the removal could not have been ignored.[72] The only document, dated August 23, 1962, that correlates the Jupiter missiles in Turkey with the Soviet military activities in Cuba is National Security Action Memorandum No. 181, which only states that there were a number of “actions and studies” the President had required “in light of evidence of new bloc activity in Cuba.” The first item on the list refers to possible ways of removing the Jupiter missiles from Turkey, but only as a study to be undertaken by the Department of Defense. This study, if at all undertaken, was never followed by an action.[73]

As the film nears its conclusion, the camera moves to a typical domestic setting to remind the audience once again of the human dimension of the crisis at its peak. In their suburban house, Helen and Kenneth O’Donnell wake up on Sunday morning to celebrate the sunrise and, implicitly, a chance for life, as they listen to Khrushchev on Radio Moscow stating the USSR’s willingness to accept President Kennedy’s terms for a peaceful settlement. Seated at the kitchen table and surrounded by his family, O’Donnell acts as if he is in a daze and cannot suppress his tears of relief and gratitude. The scene illustrates the redundancy principle of docudramatic narration, as it reminds the viewer of another morning in the O’Donnells’ kitchen in order to emphasize the fragility of life and the recklessness of taking the slightest thing for granted.

The same sense of humility and increased responsibility derives from a scene that depicts the president, surrounded by ExComm members and White House staffers, accepting their congratulations and offering advice against vain claims of victory. The proverbial loneliness of a president is alluded to once again when Kennedy withdraws into the Oval Office to dictate to Evelyn Lincoln, his personal secretary, a condolence letter for the family of Major Anderson, the U-2 pilot who lost his life over Cuba. The closing scene is a silent mid-shot of the Kennedy brothers and O’Donnell, whose figures dissolve into shadows projected onto the outdoor walls of the Oval Office. As the shadows fade away to a black screen, the concluding lines of JFK’s commencement speech at American University ring out, putting the Cuban Missile Crisis in a larger perspective.

Thirteen Days achieves docudramatic persuasion through partial character invention or the technique of the composite character, with Kenneth O’Donnell’s role epitomizing this strategy, as well as through the exclusion and compression

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