Love Story: A Deeply Moving Docudrama

My wife and I have watched all but the final, 9th episode of Love Story -- the romance of JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette -- on Hulu.  I decided to review it now.

First of all, I've felt for a long time that the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Robert F. Kennedy, and John Lennon were the most significant public events in my lifetime  -- other than landing on the Moon --not to mention heartbreaking, in different ways.  And given that JFK Jr was the son of JFK, and the nephew of RFK, I was bound to be very interested in any television series about him.

At the same time, I've been telling my students and writing for years that docudramas are inevitably very different from the realities they retell in their stories.  I realized that many years ago, when my wife and I were watching Ike, a docudrama about Dwight Eisenhower starring Robert Duvall in the title role.  As we were watching it, I began thinking, and said to my wife, that, you know, maybe Eisenhower had more charisma than I'd realized, watching his boring public statements and speeches when I was a kid.  And then I realized that of course I was thinking that, watching Duvall's performance as Ike, because of Duvall's charisma not the real Ike's.

The fact of the matter is that even a documentary inevitably commits lies of omission.  You can't put everything, not even every significant thing, in a movie, or even a TV series.  But the docudrama takes this to an extreme, inventing not only conversations but often even characters to tell its story.   And knowing that as I watched Love Story, I was nonetheless moved to tears, because it accurately portrayed the burden that JFK Jr, along with Carolyn Bessette, bore.   And though I get that Daryl Hannah was very upset with the way she was portrayed -- and I wish her well -- that didn't affect the impact Love Story has had on me.  Because it reminded me how much we lost with the assassinations of JFK and RFK, and might well have lost with the tragic deaths of JFK Jr and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy.

Paul Anthony Kelly as JFK Jr, Sarah Pidgeon as Carolyn Bessette, and Grace Gummer as Caroline Kennedy brought these real-life characters admirably to life, as did Naomi Watts as Jackie Kennedy and Jessica Harper as Ethel Kennedy.  And the writing was sharp, funny and tragic when it needed to be. And if many conversations were products of the writers -- Episode 8 (co-written by Juli Weiner and series creator Connor Hines) was 100% John and Carolyn talking, with no one else in their Tribeca apartment -- well, I don't care, that's more than fine with me.  Because those conversations provide a reasonable enough take on what those conversations most likely were.  I'm not saying Love Story is Shakespearean -- though it does have elements and echoes of that -- but I don't recall anyone attacking his ten history plays because he made up conversations among his characters.

So thank you Hulu and everyone involved for giving us a plausible not literally factual story of one of America's and the world's tragedies, for giving us a convincing glimpse through tear-drenched windows.  And as for reality -- well, if I lived in his district, I'd 100% vote for Jack Schlossberg (who criticized this docudrama as "a grotesque display") in the upcoming Democratic primary.

Note added March 27, 2026:  My wife and I just saw the 9th, final episode of Love Story.  I stand by everything I said in the above review, and indeed feel even more strongly that this is a docudrama eminently worth seeing.

This final episode leaves an indelible impression of what the Kennedys, those they loved, and those who loved them have gone through.  The conversation between Caroline and Ethel verbalized what I've been thinking since Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, the awful price that the Kennedys had paid, and would continue to pay, for their service to our country, and the wider of goals of democracy and freedom, goals and ideals which have only become more important in our country and world today.  And the cap of Carolyn's mother reciting some lines from "Death Is Nothing At All," the poem by Henry Scott Holland, captured the tenuous hope we all need to have.

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Note added June 6, 2026:  Check out this excellent piece in the Hollywood Reporter about Grace Gummer's portrayal of Caroline Kennedy in Love Story.

The Pale Blue Eye: Splendid Secret History of Young Poe

A murder mystery with all kinds of twists featuring a young Edgar Allan Poe quoting from Thomas Grey's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," my all-time favorite poem, what more could I ask for?  Well, The Pale Blue Eye has that, as well as a first class story of life at West Point in 1830, so I couldn't ask for much more regarding a movie indeed.

This gem of a movie is in effect a secret history of Poe, that is, a story of what happened to him in 1830 when he was a cadet at West Point and a newly published poet -- a story which could have happened, but no doubt didn't, which is why we don't know anything about it.  We find Poe already a published poet at this time, and his involvement in a case in which hearts and other organs are removed from bodies, and his success in figuring out who the ultimate villain was (who was also and mostly a good guy), provides a brilliant case study of how Poe already had and further developed the chops to become the father of the mystery writing genre in our real history.

[Some very general spoilers ahead ... ]

Meanwhile, the mystery story is first class.  The ultimate solution is that one person was the murderer (for the sake of revenge) and two other people dismembered most of the dead bodies.  This is itself a solution that the real Poe in our history, and for that matter, Agatha Christie, would have approved of.

Like all good secret histories, The Pale Blue Eye offers satisfying anchors to what we know of the real Poe in our history.  The stolen physical heart shows up in our reality as one of Poe's most famous short stories, "The Tell-Tale Heart".  The name of a beloved and major character shows up as title of one of Poe's best-known poems.  And of course there's a raven -- though for all I know, it could have been a crow.

The West Point and surrounding upstate New York ambience in the 1830s feels just right, at least from what I know of it from my late 20th-century early 21st century experience.  There's nothing quite like the Hudson River at this point, with the cliffs and the trees and that upstate shade of green.  John Crowley captured it well in his science fantasy trilogy, as did Scott Cooper who directed and wrote the script of The Pale Blue Eye, based on Louis Bayard's novel of the same name (which I haven't read).  And while we're at it, Harry Melling, whom I recall from the Harry Potter movies and The Queen's Gambit was excellent as Poe, even looking like him, as was Christian Bale, whom I've seen in a ton of movies, as retired NY detective Landor.  Robert Duvall as Professor Jean Pepe and Gillian Anderson as Julia Marquis were pleasures to see.  And Lucy Boynton, whom I don't recall seeing before, was just right as Lea Marquis.  All in all, one stunningly fine cast.

If you're at all a Poe fan, you won't regret seeing this movie.  I'm a huge Poe fan, and count it was one of the best films I've seen in years.

Poe figures in this alternate history novel -- more about it here

Interview with Mark Dawidziak about his book, A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe