In the 2002 TV movie RFK, Robert Kennedy puts on his John F. Kennedy's Presidential G-1 jacket after his brother's assassination.
Looking in the mirror, he is visited by a (very silly) vision of his brother, echoing voice and all:
In The Kennedy Imprisonment, Garry Wills writes that Robert "could only solve the successor problem by being more deeply charismatic than his brother - not in the superficial sense, not as a Prince Charming, but in the Weberian sense, as a rebel against the system. The more he tried to become a successor to the charisma of his brother, the less likely became his inheritance of power in the legal order." Wills quotes Lawrence O'Brien, who says that "Robert was senselessly killed because 'he didn't have a chance.'" What made Bobby so attractive to young and minority voters - his commitment to Civil Rights, his serious opposition (late and somewhat compromised though it was) to Vietnam, was exactly what made him unpalatable to the same establishment that Nixon would ride to the White House with the Southern strategy.
Bobby really did wear his brother's jacket - tellingly, the above photo was used as the jacket photo for Robert Kennedy and His Times, by Arthur Schlesinger, mythmaker-in-chief of the Kennedy years. In that context, the photo emphasizes both the idea of Bobby as finding a way to step into his brother's shoes - to find meaning in carrying on the Kennedy legacy after the tragedy of Dallas - and the fact that he will always be Kennedy's younger brother, doomed to wear his older brother's jacket. Even in a book about his times, he is unable to escape the times of John F. Kennedy.
Visited by a vision of his brother, who bequeaths a talisman of his successful Presidency to him ("It suits you"), Bobby is able to begin to move forward from the assassination and find his political footing as an individual. When, three months after the mirror encounter, Bobby says he feels "like I'm supposed to pick up the torch for his brother," his aide tells him he could never walk away from politics. Once Kennedy finally decides to run for the Senate in New York, the leather jacket isn't seen again - there's no symbolic moment of it being put aside, it just disappears. Instead of the closure of Kennedy consciously choosing to leave his brother's image behind, we get that move through clumsy dialogue during the Senate run. The specter of his brother is invisible, but not really resolved.
RFK wants the mirror moment to be deep and inspiring - it is thrusting the same torch into Bobby's hands that he himself says he doesn't want to carry. No matter how much he makes a name for himself in the Senate and on the campaign trail, we'll remember that mirror scene, and the ghost of JFK will be taking all the credit.
The image of a younger man, lost and unsure of himself in the emotional chaos surrounding a murder of a man so closely resembling himself who he then must either impersonate or reject to move forward in life, trying on the dead brother's jacket in the mirror reminded me of Alain Delon in Plein soleil, wearing Philippe (Dickie) Greenleaf's clothes:
The parallel is not exact. Bobby puts on Jack's jacket out of grief, while Tom is simply a child, unable to read the feelings and reactions of Philippe and Marge, who don't want him around. When he sees something he wants, he takes it, and in this scene he wants to be Philippe. Delon does a great job of communicating that childlike happiness as he puts on the blazer and ties the tie. But he is ultimately punished for his inability to read Philippe and Marge, to be an adult - punished on the boat, sure, but first here.
Ripley puts on the blazer not to see if it fits, like Bobby, but because he knows it will fit. Jack speaks to Bobby first from inside the mirror, and Bobby is reluctant to go along with him; Tom speaks to himself first, loving his own image, pretending he is both Philippe and Marge - he doesn't just want the clothes, he wants them, their adulthood, their emotional life which he cannot understand. We see Philippe's legs - Tom's fall from innocence - in the mirror before Tom does. And because Tom is just a child, the fall is painful to watch.
In RFK, Jack passes on the mantle of his political maturity - the Presidency, the ultimate American political maturity - to Bobby. Bobby wears that mantle until he can discard it in order to find his own path to that maturity, but of course it is not his own path, and never will be - he can never take the mantle off once it has been bequeathed. Philippe, however, takes back the mantle of his adulthood from Tom ("Take off my clothes"). Tom, who feels he will never achieve Philippe's ease in the world, his poise, his relationships, on his own, soon realizes that he must reclaim the mantle somehow, and does so by murdering Philippe.
Once he has the mantle, however, it tightens into a prison. Marge reminds him of Philippe; Freddy Miles suspects him because of Philippe's stolen things; and, in the end, Philippe returns, tangled in the propeller of the boat (oh, what could have been if Clément had allowed Ripley to get away with it! A much better film). Bobby and Tom are both doomed from the moment they put on the jackets - not to die, necessarily, but to lose something of themselves. Bobby is wearing his brother's jacket even as he protests that he wants to go teach at Oxford instead of pursuing politics - his clothes belie his words, however sincere they may be, and by the time he takes the jacket off, it's too late - he's already running for Senate. Tom is doomed by acting on his urges - by opening the Pandora's box rather than simply imagining what is inside, he must ultimately kill, and (in the film, at least) be punished for that killing, to own what he sees inside.
JFK: It's a little big in the shoulders. Suppose you could grow into it.
RFK: Or I could walk away from it.
JFK: Why would you want to do that?
RFK: Things don't make sense anymore, Jack.
JFK: You think it ever did?
RFK: I don't know what to believe in anymore.
JFK: Jesus, Bobby, you always needed to think somebody had all the answers. What are you going to do, put God on the witness stand? [pause] It suits you.
In The Kennedy Imprisonment, Garry Wills writes that Robert "could only solve the successor problem by being more deeply charismatic than his brother - not in the superficial sense, not as a Prince Charming, but in the Weberian sense, as a rebel against the system. The more he tried to become a successor to the charisma of his brother, the less likely became his inheritance of power in the legal order." Wills quotes Lawrence O'Brien, who says that "Robert was senselessly killed because 'he didn't have a chance.'" What made Bobby so attractive to young and minority voters - his commitment to Civil Rights, his serious opposition (late and somewhat compromised though it was) to Vietnam, was exactly what made him unpalatable to the same establishment that Nixon would ride to the White House with the Southern strategy.
Bobby really did wear his brother's jacket - tellingly, the above photo was used as the jacket photo for Robert Kennedy and His Times, by Arthur Schlesinger, mythmaker-in-chief of the Kennedy years. In that context, the photo emphasizes both the idea of Bobby as finding a way to step into his brother's shoes - to find meaning in carrying on the Kennedy legacy after the tragedy of Dallas - and the fact that he will always be Kennedy's younger brother, doomed to wear his older brother's jacket. Even in a book about his times, he is unable to escape the times of John F. Kennedy.
Visited by a vision of his brother, who bequeaths a talisman of his successful Presidency to him ("It suits you"), Bobby is able to begin to move forward from the assassination and find his political footing as an individual. When, three months after the mirror encounter, Bobby says he feels "like I'm supposed to pick up the torch for his brother," his aide tells him he could never walk away from politics. Once Kennedy finally decides to run for the Senate in New York, the leather jacket isn't seen again - there's no symbolic moment of it being put aside, it just disappears. Instead of the closure of Kennedy consciously choosing to leave his brother's image behind, we get that move through clumsy dialogue during the Senate run. The specter of his brother is invisible, but not really resolved.
RFK wants the mirror moment to be deep and inspiring - it is thrusting the same torch into Bobby's hands that he himself says he doesn't want to carry. No matter how much he makes a name for himself in the Senate and on the campaign trail, we'll remember that mirror scene, and the ghost of JFK will be taking all the credit.
The image of a younger man, lost and unsure of himself in the emotional chaos surrounding a murder of a man so closely resembling himself who he then must either impersonate or reject to move forward in life, trying on the dead brother's jacket in the mirror reminded me of Alain Delon in Plein soleil, wearing Philippe (Dickie) Greenleaf's clothes:
The parallel is not exact. Bobby puts on Jack's jacket out of grief, while Tom is simply a child, unable to read the feelings and reactions of Philippe and Marge, who don't want him around. When he sees something he wants, he takes it, and in this scene he wants to be Philippe. Delon does a great job of communicating that childlike happiness as he puts on the blazer and ties the tie. But he is ultimately punished for his inability to read Philippe and Marge, to be an adult - punished on the boat, sure, but first here.
Ripley puts on the blazer not to see if it fits, like Bobby, but because he knows it will fit. Jack speaks to Bobby first from inside the mirror, and Bobby is reluctant to go along with him; Tom speaks to himself first, loving his own image, pretending he is both Philippe and Marge - he doesn't just want the clothes, he wants them, their adulthood, their emotional life which he cannot understand. We see Philippe's legs - Tom's fall from innocence - in the mirror before Tom does. And because Tom is just a child, the fall is painful to watch.
In RFK, Jack passes on the mantle of his political maturity - the Presidency, the ultimate American political maturity - to Bobby. Bobby wears that mantle until he can discard it in order to find his own path to that maturity, but of course it is not his own path, and never will be - he can never take the mantle off once it has been bequeathed. Philippe, however, takes back the mantle of his adulthood from Tom ("Take off my clothes"). Tom, who feels he will never achieve Philippe's ease in the world, his poise, his relationships, on his own, soon realizes that he must reclaim the mantle somehow, and does so by murdering Philippe.
Once he has the mantle, however, it tightens into a prison. Marge reminds him of Philippe; Freddy Miles suspects him because of Philippe's stolen things; and, in the end, Philippe returns, tangled in the propeller of the boat (oh, what could have been if Clément had allowed Ripley to get away with it! A much better film). Bobby and Tom are both doomed from the moment they put on the jackets - not to die, necessarily, but to lose something of themselves. Bobby is wearing his brother's jacket even as he protests that he wants to go teach at Oxford instead of pursuing politics - his clothes belie his words, however sincere they may be, and by the time he takes the jacket off, it's too late - he's already running for Senate. Tom is doomed by acting on his urges - by opening the Pandora's box rather than simply imagining what is inside, he must ultimately kill, and (in the film, at least) be punished for that killing, to own what he sees inside.
