How history will remember

Rating: 7/10 (31 January 2017)

We have different ways of feeling affinity for stories, and how those stories are remembered beyond one's lifetime is the core of this film. Jackie Kennedy has a sharp, perhaps unprecedented sense of legacy. During the week of her husband's death we see her dealing with grief and a responsibility to her children, but above all, a responsibility to protect her husband's legacy as President and historical figure in the making. She knows that how his is remembered is now up to her. He didn't have time to be Abraham Lincoln. This theme of history pervades, weaving in footage from her Tour of the White House, revealing her efforts to preserve its history and artifacts. Her understanding for the value of the past in the present and future, for the role of the arts in this remembrance, is clear from the start, haunted foreshadowing of what is to come.