Jackie, or the search for meaning and redemption

Rating: 9/10 (2 March 2017)

Jackie Kennedy is one of the symbols of the 20th century. Her magical aura has struck many, for decades past, and for many decades to come. Elegant, refined, graceful. This has always been her public persona. But what lies behind that facade? Pablo Larrain's extraordinary English-language debut explores the behind the scenes of what was the aftermath of America's most shocking political event of the century. And it does in a way that involves each and every one of the viewers into a psychological character study that is bound to haunt for days. Larrain's and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim's questions directly delve into our own role in history. What do we want to be remembered for? What kind of image do we want to leave to society? Jackie Kennedy had made her stunning elegance her trade-mark, so much so that she's still regarded as the prime example of it. Yet, like a fatal and hypnotizing witch, she lures many a character into a dark, soul-searching journey. She questions her role as a woman, wife, widow, mother, confessing her trauma and her inner conflicts first to a priest, then to a journalist. It feels like a long psychoanalytical session, where we finally discover the true feelings of a character that, more often than not, history has shown as some sort of front-page drawing. We finally see the soul behind the mannerism, the hurt beneath her voice, the world beyond her eyes.
None of this would be possible without the haunting performance given by Natalie Portman. She completely disappears into her role, giving Jackie an incredibly complex and chilling portrayal. She breathes life into the somewhat doll-like remembrance that we've inherited from history, and at the same time she doesn't lose any of the legendary magic of the original Jackie Kennedy.
In what seems almost like an ode to an age past, where people were still humbled by the mission of serving people and purposely guiding them to a better future, Pablo Larrain puts Jackie the bloody rite of passage, making her an icon for a whole people that lost its innocence overnight, pushing it to come to terms with the stark reality of finiteness, of the breaking of dreams, of a Camelot that only exists for one brief shining moment before it's gone forever.