Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Kirsten Stewart, Yvan Attal, Gabriel Sky, Jack O’ Connell, Margaret Qualley, Colm Meaney, Vince Vaughn, Stephen Root, Anthony Mackie, Celeste Pechous, Laura Campbell, Jade Pettyjohn, Zazie Beetz, Grantham Coleman, Tobias Truvillion, Noelle Danique Louie, James Jordan, Diane Chernasky.

A story that not only needs telling but expressing effectively is one that that should stand out beyond the norm, especially when it involves life as seen through the eyes of the oppressed and the exploited.

Such stories of human existence and mental suffering have pricked the conscious of the film lover for decades, and quite often the tale is wrapped up in the reality of how governments can, and will, use every means at their disposal to discredit, harm, and smear the subject in question if it means keeping hold of their power and their control.

In telling the story well, in offering the truth to the audience, the film can raise the shackles to which all humanity of often placed, but by omitting details, in refusing to capture the sheer emotion of the breakdown of the soul, or even framing the point of overwhelming satisfaction at pinning down the sense of devil like authority, the film does its own injustice, one that can see an audience turn away from the message wishing to be delivered.

This sense of misplaced opportunity is one that unfortunately strides through what would have been a genuinely enlightening biopic of American actor Jean Seberg, and is only rescued by some gutsy performances by Zazie Beetz as Dorothy Jamel, wife of Black Panther member Hakim Jamel and Vince Vaughn as the over-zealous and psychotic F.B.I. Investigator Carl Kowalski.

This is not to say that Seberg is not important or doesn’t carry a message of defiance in the face of overwhelming state tyranny against the individual and their choices, but that it just didn’t have enough of almost everything that makes a stand out biopic of someone’s life worth investigating further. The problem comes down to anger, to suspicion and emotion, the story may be ideal, but it is in the execution of delivery that the punch lines fades, almost into the obscurity to which the forces behind government would wish to see.

As such in dreams that we can make the world a better place, however with hindsight and control of the narrative at our disposal we often lose focus of what actually matters, and in Seberg that overall system of belief and rage against the machine is lost in its own turmoil and lack of passion which would have made it brutally compelling.

Ian D. Hall