The deliberate pacing may test your patience, but Jackie remains an authentically personal account of an infamous crime

Rating: 7/10 (18 October 2017)

It doesn't matter who you are or how much privilege you enjoy, having your spouse murdered so brutally beside you is a monstrous tragedy. Jackie captures the pain, both sharp and bleak, that the First Lady must have experienced during and after her husband's assassination. A particularly poignant moment is when Jackie sobs as she wipes the blood from her face; it is her first moment alone since the horrific shock of her life-changing trauma. However, her character becomes less sympathetic as she reveals a prickly demeanour with a tendency to be difficult. Not a diva by any means, just a bit unnecessary.
The performances and period detailing are excellent, but Pablo Larrain's deliberate pacing is just a little bit too slow. It gets to the point where the repeated shots of Jackie's withdrawn doe-eyed face elicit annoyance rather than pathos. At 1hr 40 minutes, Jackie is not a long film, yet it could have and perhaps should have been even shorter. Perhaps the editor's scissors could have been taken to the sequences with Jackie's priest (John Hurt), which consist largely of asinine religious musings. Then again, Catholicism was more important to the Kennedys than it is to me.
Even with the pacing issues, Jackie remains an authentically personal account of an infamous crime.