Saint Joan of the Black Power Movement

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Kristen Stewart as Jean Seberg: She wanted to be more than just a pretty Hollywood face.

Photo: Prokino

The black power fist raised into the sky is now a widely welcomed gesture of solidarity against racism, also used by whites.

If, in addition, stars and public figures become politically active against the unequal treatment of blacks and other minorities, it is generally welcomed, if not demanded in the sense of a social change for the better.

However, anyone who was famous in the 1960s and actively came out as a supporter of blacks in the USA had to expect to be targeted by FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover's secret and illegal shadowing and defamation campaign "Cointelpro" .

This is what happened to Muhammad Ali, John Lennon, Jane Fonda - and also to US actress Jean Seberg when she returned to her home country from France in 1968 and embarked on a political and private affair with civil rights activist Hakim Jamal.

In the film "Jean Seberg", which now starts in the cinema with perfect Zeitgeist timing, Seberg (Kristen Stewart) unceremoniously stands between some of the Black Panther members gathered on the tarmac after landing in Los Angeles.

At first she hesitantly holds up her fist, then vehemently: the delicate, white actress between the martial-looking blacks with their paramilitary berets, a feast for the crowd of photographers.

And a nuisance to the FBI director.

He declares the Seberg case to be a top priority and uses an eavesdropping team to monitor the film star in the most private way and to "neutralize" it with all manipulative (and illegal) means.

"There's a war on black people in America," Hakim (Anthony Mackie) warns his new ally and lover, "and you're in the middle of the crossfire."

But Seberg ignores the warnings.

When her agent suggests a lucrative role in the musical "Westward pulls the wind" (which she later also accepts), she turns up her nose: It doesn't matter!

She'd rather do something relevant.

Even as a teenager in the provincial kaff Marshalltown in the US state of Iowa, the real Jean supported the black organization NAACP.

In her adopted country of France, she became the star of the French Nouvelle Vague from 1960 when Jean-Luc Godard cast her alongside Jean-Paul Belmondo in "Out of Breath".

Her short, blonde pixie haircut became an icon - and Seberg an actress, inspired by the European cinema and salon discourse, who wanted to be more than just a beautiful Hollywood face.

"Jean Seberg - Against all Enemies"

USA 2019

Script:

Joe Shrapnel

Benedict Andrews

Kristen Stewart, Jack O'Connell, Margaret Qualley, Zazie Beetz, Yvan Attal, Stephen Root, Colm Meaney, Anthony Mackie

Metalwork Pictures

Prokino Filmverleih

103 minutes

from 12 years

September 17, 2020

But Seberg is psychologically shattered by the official stalking and the reputation damage launched by the press - but also by her excessive demands and the adverse conditions of the time.

Her marriage to the French writer Romain Gary (Yvan Attal) perishes, as does her relationship with the married Hakim.

His angry wife Dorothy (Zazie Beetz) accuses her of cultural appropriation: Her interest in the plight of blacks does not make her a better person: "It just makes you a tourist."

At the beginning of the film, Seberg is shown as a martyr.

"Saint Johanna" was her first leading role in 1957, she had prevailed in a talent competition, but had to endure Otto Preminger's tyrannical direction and suffered real burns in the final pyre scene.

A traumatic experience.

But the film does not penetrate more deeply into Seberg's inner motives than with this emblematic image.

Instead, director Benedict Andrews wastes a lot of time on a subplot that revolves around two fictional FBI agents who monitor Seberg: a character pig played by Vince Vaughn and a young, ambitious wiretapping specialist (Jack O'Connell) who is plagued by remorse, the nastier the fragile actress is driven into the abyss.

In an attempt to not only be a biopic, but also a social panorama of the 1960s and a homage to classic paranoia and political thrillers, the main character and her touching fate keep falling out of focus.

Jean Seberg, who committed suicide in 1979 at the age of 40, remains a tragic figure in the cinematic appraisal of her life.

Only leading actress Kristen Stewart saves this unfortunately undecided film from failure: Kristen Stewart shines in almost every scene with the intense, ever-tense delicacy that has made her one of the best actresses of her generation in recent years.

Like Seberg, the "Twilight" star also experiences his greatest artistic successes in European cinema, most recently in "Personal Shopper", directed by Olivier Assayas.

Stewart is committed to gender equality in the film industry and wants to tell "confrontational" stories in her films, as she said in an interview.

Interesting too

Novel about everyday racism: Young, black, female - and lost? By Katharina Stegelmann

She actively defends herself against the image of the sweet "sweetheart" with her choice of roles and her often emphatically unsexualized styling.

Her brilliant embodiment of Jean Seberg alone, constantly vacillating between self-assertion and vulnerability, tells a lot about the dilemmas of female stars who swim against the current and collide with powerful men.

A topic as current as the Black Panther fist clenched in the sky.

Icon: The mirror