Presidential Reflections

When the grainy, opening sequence of Bruce Conner’s Report rolls onto screen, the audience is already bracing for what it knows is about to happen. The footage preceding the assassination of president Kennedy is famous enough to set a dark tone even before anything has been said. The repetitive cuts settle the viewer deeper into their unease. Audio and image work hand in hand as the one provides a steady narration that regresses its audience back to that period in history and the other’s choppy surrealism sews sensations of horror. The first half of the film is homage and mourning; when the president’s wound is called out, and the visual turns a plain, strobing white, we are left to feel the moment’s dismay. While the announcer’s voice becomes shocked and breathless, the visuals match, throwing the audience into numb grief.

The fact that we, the viewers, cannot see the violence, cannot see if the president has survived – never mind that we know he has not – adds an almost Greek terror to the film; the panic that comes from things unseen. We are left in a state of agitated alarm, and when a countdown begins and time progresses back into random clips of separate violence, we are primed for it. Specifically, we are to lament Kennedy’s death, but later, the film presents us with the nature of death itself. Human works, such as silly commercials and bullfights, are shown as gratuitous and pointless. Clips of patriotic flags must contend with images of man’s subjugation of nature. Though the pall of the assassination is still upon us, Report presents death and pain as subjects of our own design. It seems to put the assassination's blame upon us as a species, forcing us to view the lesser parts of our nature. The frivolousness of the Kennedies seems to come through as the announcer talks of Jackie’s clothing choices and roses, as well as the size and grandeur of Airforce one and its crowds. In the middle of the film, it seems Report is not a piece of mourning at all, but a critique. A mad scientist raises Frankenstein, paralleling Kennedy’s coffin; it suggests our own inability to face death. Things change again, however, as the footage comes to a close. Tragedy takes center stage once more as the announcer foreshadows: “this is one of those impromptu moments for which President Kennedy is so well known. So many times you have heard that the secret service men find themselves without the president, that suddenly he has left them….” The visuals show various scenes in reverse, a sort of backward motion that offers forgiveness as the clips revert back to the positive.

Undoubtably, Report is meant to incite mourning; forcing its audience to live out the past, place it in context and compare it with both the present and our morals. It gives us the choppy, unmediated chaos of the living moment, and while our guard is down, asks us to question not just the “Report’s” instance, but those social factors which culminated in it happening.