JFK Memento: A Chronicle of the Assassination review: merging place and time

The JFK assassination has been pored over ad infinitum, a never-ending well of speculation and conjecture inspiring countless productions in various mediums. Director Chloé Rochereuil nevertheless brings some freshness and ingenuity to this well-flogged subject in her engrossing documentary series JFK Memento: A Chronicle of the Assassination. The wow factor comes not just from “being there,” to drop two words that often appear in conversations about virtual presence, but about being in certain places—such as Elm Street in Dealey Plaza, where JFK was killed—at multiple times, crossing the temporal threshold. We almost literally have one foot in the past and the other in the present. 

Separated into five mini episodes, of less than 10 minutes apiece, begins with us facing the Texas School Book Depository building, the famous grassy knoll located down the street to our left. The narrator, who reminded me of Robert Stack from Unsolved Mysteries—that smooth American lilt, like caramelly bourbon—declares that there are few sites “where we can say world history changed there,” this of course being one of them.

When we first observe Kennedy’s motorcade, it’s an unusual sight that takes a little getting used to—merging the real world with the virtual, and past with present. Actual, semi-transparent footage of it appears before us, overlaid onto the rendered environment, the ghostly figures of JFK and Jacqueline with Onassis moving down the street. This technique is deployed many times throughout the experience. 

In the next immersion, situated on the sixth floor inside the former Depository—now a museum—the narrator notes how various items provide clues about what happened, and wonders: “what if you could step inside them, and go back in time?” This line establishes an underlying idea that we can use virtual reality to step inside the evidence. That “i” word reflects a common way to express the heightened immersivity enabled by the medium: it’s been suggested many times for instance that VR enables cinephiles to step inside the movie, and art appreciators to step inside the picture. Which is true, more or less, but in the case of stepping inside the evidence, it’s a bit of a stretch, insinuating that virtual recreations may unearth hitherto undiscovered realizations.

We’re introduced to interviewees such as Mary Ann Moorman, a stay at home mother who happened to take a photograph of JFK a fraction of a second after he was shot. Before she appears before us, in a central position seated on an armchair in her house, we find ourselves in a darked tableau in front of a chest of drawers. There’s a collection of photos above it, showing various younger versions of Moorman, while the narrator verbally introduces her—a tasteful and personal combination of audio/visual elements. At the end of this segment, Rochereuil fades the immersion to black but keeps one aspect visible: a vintage radio to the left, from which we hear an old news bulletin. 

JFK Memento contains lots of nice touches. I particularly appreciated the aforementioned blending of monochrome and colour, real and virtual, present and past, such as when, inside the book depository, black-and-white photographs appear before us that explode into pieces, spraying onto the environment around us with monochrome—a very cool embellishment. In another immersion, we arrive at the car park where Lee Harvey Oswalt was shot, past and present merging again in a similar way. It’s a very compelling documentary from beginning to end—which, given the number of times this material has been pored over, is a considerable achievement.