Jackie, Pablo Larrain

“There will never be another Camelot”.
These final words still ring in my head as a deep philosophical truth within this story of Jackie Kennedy who experiences the murder of her husband John F. Kennedy which will trigger a dissociation in Jackie between her memories and the downfall of John’s death in her private and public life. Pablo Larrain, the Chilean director of Jackie, created a masterpiece that deeply moved me for its themes, moody ambiance and powerful core message. From the start of the film to the credits, I felt an unbearable desperation and emptiness; I felt as if the film was emptying what was previously in my soul, to fill us with sadness, anger, confusion, empathy caused by Jackie’s trauma. I rarely felt as invested and immersed in a film as I was following Mrs. Kennedy (Natalie Portman). The unsettling but brief moments of gore and blood that held my attention, intensified the traumatic feeling throughout the movie.

My interest to psychological disorders and their impact on cinema was sparked as the whole film evolves around its protagonist’s trauma: Jackie suffers from dissociative states and depression as she keeps living the event that led to her husband’s (JFK) shooting, goes through his burying and slowly falls into emptiness. Larrain’s cinematic choices brilliantly shed light on Jackie’s trauma: everything is based on dissociation and mirrored words or scenes. For example, Jackie calls her husband “Jack” as if he was her own alter ego, a part of herself; therefore when he dies, a part of her dies with him. Jackie can be seen as a castle of mirrors as she keeps repeating her husband’s death in two ways: images that bring us back to John F. Kennedy's murder with Jackie as the anchor, through her perception and feelings; but also through her words: she spends half an hour repeating “He is dead”, “The President is Dead”, “My husband is dead”, “My husband the president is dead”. But the most remarkable dissociation that Larrain succeeds in creating is the dissociation between the cold unfriendly film that he made with this alien score and rare close-ups and the power of the connection between us and the trauma he depicts. The score is repeated over and over evolving into a freezing and disorienting device; however it also conveys the feelings of the first lady with such precision as to let us see an overwhelming breach in her mask, a mask that she created to shield herself from the outside world, dissociating then her public and private behavior.
It isn’t always easy to see beyond the actor in movies, forgetting who they are and their past film, when you've seen them in twenty other characters. Here, we see beyond Natalie Portman, we forgot about her and only see Jackie Kennedy, the accent is really on point, her gaze is very strong, the way she behaves, expresses herself…. Even though there are significant differences, what matters is that she completely opens up about her trauma to the audience; this is exactly why I believed in her character: Natalie Portman isn’t pretending to be Jackie, she fully embodies her.
Jackie is a wonderful example of how trauma is unbearable, how it can affect and dissociate our memories and behavior. I know that there will always be a part of me stuck in the past with Natalie Portman’s representation of Jackie as she took a part of me in her fall, by her unexpressive screams, anger and sadness, by Mica Levi's music, and unforgettable shocking scenes. I’ve been deeply moved by the cinematographic choices that Larrain, Fontaine (director of photography), Oppenheim (screenwriter) and even Levi portrayed. Everything felt homogenous and accordant to express a somewhat common trauma (although in unique circumstances) but in a way never expressed before.
"Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot...There'll never be another Camelot again...”
There’ll never be another Jackie again.