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I have been thinking about Oliver Stone’s JFK, which I recently re-watched for the first time since seeing it in the theater.

You may recall that at the time the film originally came out, there was a large fooferah surrounding the accuracy of the story. Stone took a lot of criticism for his rather formalist approach to history—here he was, purporting to recreate a well-known and high-profile part of our nation’s history, and yet he was clearly playing fast and loose with the facts. As a film maker, doesn’t he owe his audience more than a pile of vaguely-referenced conspiracy theory stitched together with fancy editing and a manipulative score?

At the time, the answer was “No,” and it still is.

By the time JFK came out, Oliver Stone was well-known as an activist director with a clearly defined point of view. Anyone going into the theater expecting an objective historical account is a fool. Frankly, anyone expecting to get any kind of objective historical account of the Kennedy assassination is going to be disappointed. This event has become such a jumbled mess of history, conspiracy, and rumor that untangling it is a lost cause.

Stone’s intentions, however, are beside the point. While JFK can be evaluated for its historical accuracy (dicey at best), it is first and foremost a film. As such, it’s pretty damn good. The extended “Director’s Cut” version that is now available on DVD is overly long, but otherwise, the performances, plotting, editing, and direction are excellent (I’m grading Costner on a curve here). Holding a director responsible for the foolish interpretations made by the viewers of the work leads down a fairly slippery road. There are obviously some gray areas when it comes to historical dramas such as this one, but the ambiguousness of Stone’s subject matter here grants him a fair amount of latitude.

On a somewhat more contemporary note, JFK also got me to thinking about the historical period surrounding the film as compared to the one we find ourselves in now.

In a relatively brief amount of time, we had the assassinations of a sitting President, major civil rights leaders (MLK and Malcolm X), and the likely Democratic nominee for President (RFK). Meanwhile, the country was mired in a war that ended up killing almost 60,000 U.S. troops, involved a nationwide military draft, and generated huge domestic protests. Finally, we rounded things out with the resignation of a President facing impeachment. All the while, the Soviets had a metric assload of live nukes pointed at us.

And yet, we are to believe that we currently face the worst threat the country has ever seen.