The story of the movie is speculative and does not hold water. When Ted Kennedy drove Kopechne away from the party, the story becomes questionable. Even though Chappaquiddick uses Kennedy's testimonies from the time, it also proves an impossible story to tell 100 percent accurately as certain parts don't quite add up.
The strangest aspect of Kopechne's death is the fact that it took Kennedy 10 hours to call the police after driving the car off the bridge. As both the movie and the historical record divulge, a passerby found the car in the morning and called the police. The diver who extracted Kopechne's body said in his testimony that he could have gotten the woman out of the car in 25 minutes following the crash had he been notified, which the movie also shows.
Instead of calling the authorities, Ted Kennedy testified that he tried to get Kopechne out of the car himself until he determined that he couldn't and returned to the cottage where the party had been held. There, he got his cousin Joe Gargan (Ed Helms) and Gargan's friend, U.S. Attorney Paul Markham (Jim Gaffigan), who joined the senator in forming a plan. In Kennedy's testimony, he said that he swam back to his hotel - he originally testified that he had been driving himself and Kopechne to the ferry dock to return to their respective hotels in Edgartown on Martha's Vineyard. In the movie, however, Joe and Paul bring Kennedy back to Edgartown on a row boat, where he then changes his suit and calls his father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. This is all speculative. The Kennedy team fixing the story is also speculative.
Even though Chappaquiddick fills audiences in on the 10 hours between the accident and the next day when Kennedy finally called the police, it still largely remains mysterious why the senator chose not to call first responders immediately. "Gargan and Markham not only failed to get immediate help, but also let the senator swim back alone to report the accident from Edgartown,"
The movie also speculates that Kopechne could have been alive in the submerged car for a few hours following the crash. But nobody knows the truth of what happened to her. She could have been dead shortly after the accident.
Many questions remain with no answers, many speculations with no evidence, and even though Chappaquiddick mostly accurately recounts the events of July 18, 1969 in Massachusetts, the only thing that audiences will walk out of the theater knowing for sure is that the exact events following the car crash will likely never be revealed.
19 out of 35 found this helpful