The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford has all the hallmarks of a 70s-style revisionist western: a langorous pace, moral ambiguity, an emphasis on anti-heroes, and hyper-awareness of the natural world. Also, like most revisionist westerns, it takes as its subject the death of the frontier, but does so in an ingenious fashion. While movies like Heaven's Gate trace the decline of American freedom to the capitalist commodification of western spaces, director Andrew Dominik, working from Ron Hansen's novel, focus on the culture of the West: according to these filmmakers, the West began to die when it started to become self-aware. This point is illustrated by the two main characters. Jesse James (Brad Pitt), the aging folk hero trapped by the expectations of his own legandary exploits, and Robert Ford (Casey Affleck), James' proto-stalker who is obsessed with James while also yearning to take his place. In both cases, the mythology of the western outlaw has overpowered either character's ability to really claim the freedom offered by the expanses of the frontier.
Even though Affleck was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actor, the movie truly belongs to him. Pitt is excellent as James; he coaxes layers of melancholy, playfulness and savagery out of the part, but when the screen goes black it's Robert Ford who resonates. His pathological need for validation and acknowledgment is a harbinger of our modern sickness of celebrity worship. Afflec fawns and stammers over James whenever they interact, but he also loathes James for occupying the exhalted position he himself craves more than air. It's a powerful performance, and it actually contributes to one of the film's chief weaknesses. The film spends two hours dramatizing the push-pull of adoration and revulsion between the two men before the titular murder occurs. That leaves little more than half an hour to rush through the rest of Robert Ford's life. The coda feels hurried, with intriguing notions of growth, regret and the birth of celebrity culture gestured towards, but mostly left unexplored. It also undercuts the power of an otherwise intensely poignant final scene. Nevertheless, the raw humanity of the performances coupled with a vibrantly lyrical visual pallette makes The Assassination of Jesse James one of the most well crafted and memorable studio films of the last few years.
Score: 8.5
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3 comments:
why this movie didn't win for best cinematography at the oscars is beyond me. the use of light, color and pin-hole photography is incredible.
I agree--much as "no country" and "there will be blood" used light and landscape to evoke their principal themes, "jesse james" has moments of pure visual transcendence unlike anything I saw in film last year.
Matt--how did you feel about the narrator in this film? Lots of narration often sinks a good project, but here I felt like it was pretty effective.
And too I think this was a terrible time for Affleck to be in the mix for a best supporting actor nod. He's really great here--coupled with his work in Gone Baby Gone he had a damn good year.
But his Robert Ford was surely one of the most overlooked performances of the season. I saw this for the third time the other night and was struck by the layers of envy, rage, jealousy he was able to put into his character.
Also Weeks has five errors and is hitting .125. Do something about this please.
I'm not really sold on this film's brand of novelistic voice over, but its much more successfully deployed in this film than in Little Children, which attempts a simliar voiceover gambit. Some of the bits felt unnecessary, some were distracting, but some of them, especially the ones at towards the beginning of the film, served an important purpose in giving the viewer context.
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