Claire Folger/Entertainment Studios via APThis image released by Entertainment Studios shows Jason Clarke as Ted Kennedy, left, and Kate Mara as Mary Jo Kopechne in a scene from “Chappaquiddick.”

 Editor’s note: This is The Star’s debut of weekly film reviews by professional film critic Michael Calleri that will publish in Life.

If we know anything about scandals involving politicians, it’s that the story always has extremes. Somewhere in the center of what’s being reported, there are facts straining to break free.

Edward Kennedy became a United States Senator in 1962. Seven years later, after the assassinations of his brothers, President John F. Kennedy (in 1963) and Senator Robert F. Kennedy (in 1968), Ted, as he was known, found himself embroiled in a scandal that swiftly closed the door on any chance he would have to be elected President of the United States. The new movie “Chappaquiddick” invites audiences to conduct their own autopsy on a moment in his life.

Although Ted would become a highly regarded member of the U. S. Senate, in 1969 he was still considered the Kennedy brother with a little less depth. He had boyish good looks, an innate charm, and a partying attitude. The primary reason the family wanted him to be President of the United States was to fulfill a legacy that had been torn asunder. Remember also, that the Kennedy brother named Joe Jr. died during World War II.

Ted’s father, Joe Sr., didn’t respect his son. As seen in the film, the old man (played with the most brutal kind of parental steel by Bruce Dern), is disgusted with how Ted seems to have fallen into another miasma, this time the sensational automobile accident on rickety Dike Bridge on Chappaquiddick Island. The entrance to the short, one-lane, uncovered wooden structure was set at an angle different from the direction of the road, and there were no guardrails. These details are essential to how Ted and the powerful men around him – cousins and consultants – begin to address the tragedy that had befallen the Massachusetts Senator.

As directed by John Curran, and written by Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan, and not based on any cited book but rather on public documents and reporting, the movie tells us that on the weekend in July 1969, when men would walk on the moon, Kennedy was hosting a party on Martha’s Vineyard for a group of “boiler room girls.” These are young women who worked behind the scenes on various Kennedy campaigns, including Robert’s and Ted’s. Chappaquiddick itself is a small island within a larger island.

Kennedy decides to drive one of the women, Mary Jo Kopechne (Kate Mara), to the ferry terminal. There is ambiguity here as to whether or not they first stopped to talk or to kiss. What is known is that Kennedy eventually misjudged the road and the car went off the bridge into a tidal channel and Kopechne drowned.

What we discover as Kennedy’s life unravels – at one point he even says that the situation means he isn’t going to be President – is that the Senator didn’t report the incident for ten hours. And, most horrifically, that it probably took Kopechne two hours to drown in the overturned car, mired in mud and water, from which she cannot escape.

We witness what the movie offers as its truths. Kennedy calls in very powerful movers and shakers in his circle, including both JFK’s Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (strongly played by Clancy Brown) and JFK’s celebrated speechwriter Theodore Sorensen. He also calls in favors from small-town law enforcement officials for whom the Kennedy name is a clarion call to immediate co-operative behavior, and he calls upon his wife Joan to behave herself at Kopechne’s funeral. Everybody around him must be, as spoken in the film, “loyal to the cause.”

“Chappaquiddick” isn’t really about whether or not Kennedy’s behavior was dumb, questionable, or criminal. It’s about how audiences will react to the political games being played to make sure his image isn’t tarnished. How will they see this man? With compassion? Or with disgust?

Jason Clarke is very good as the initially weak-willed and confused senator. Clarke offers quiet intensity and a strong understanding of the senator’s conflicted thoughts. Kennedy begins to think there may be a way out of the mess in which he finds himself.

In “Chappaquiddick,”darkness delivers a nightmare. Tragic fate never ignored the Kennedys. Important to me were the two hours Kopechne lived while trapped and gasping for air in the car as Kennedy swam away.

Moviegoers are given the opportunity to be the senator’s jury. The way in which the film is structured means it’s not an easy task.

THE LEISURE SEEKER: This first English-language feature from Italy’s Paolo Virzi rides along on the shoulders of its wonderful stars, Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland, who play Ella and John, an elderly married couple from Wellesley, Massachusetts. In a battered 1975 Winnebago, the two will skip town for a free-wheeling adventure without telling anybody, including their adult children.

Ella is taking her husband, who’s an Ernest Hemingway scholar, to Hemingway’s restored house in Key West, Florida. John may have Alzheimer’s disease, and it will be revealed that Ella has serious concerns about her own health. They encounter magnanimous people, as well as misfits, in this gentle comedy that occasionally drifts from its mission.

“The Leisure Seeker” is about two determined elders who insist on living the closing chapter of their lives as they desire. No nursing home, thank you very much. You go for Mirren and Sutherland, two grand pros, create sweet and loving characters. The story may stumble, but they do not.

• Michael Calleri has been reviewing movies professionally since 1990 and in his lifetime has seen more than 10,000 films in theaters and through other sources. If he had to choose the films of one director with which to relax, they would be Alfred Hitchcock’s. He can be reached at moviecolumn@gmail.com