'Report' is an eerily affecting associative film that contains no original footage--it was entirely made at the editing table. Conner recreates within viewers the feeling of having been at JFK's assassination--among other things, he loops the same few seconds of actual Kennedy footage with the running commentary of radio announcers--you can feel the confusion, and it triggers that desire to SEE the President, or anything--a very human response to tragedy, and what America must have felt--by the fifth minute of straight black, strobing black and white, and seemingly endless uncompleted countdowns of the Academy leader. But not even the reporters being heard can see what is happening.
The film is laden with images of death and draws comparison between the absolute shock at the assassination, and the death motif of the images and descriptions preceeding--Kennedy rides by in his 'gunmetal grey' limousine, the police fight back adoring school children to the footage of World War I warfare.
'Report' undermines our faith in the image and its ability to deliver truth and meaning--the two exact things that the country has been searching for since Kennedy's death. We still ask 'what really happened?' and 'why?', and we still have no answers. It is a film about loss, an ironic juxtaposition of images that at first may seem random, but in the end makes for a uniquely powerful experience.
