Let’s talk about The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. (It’s a long title, but that’s okay. It’s appropriate.) I had high hopes for it when I first saw the posters and online clips, and it turns out to be one darn good film.
Usually I follow that up with something negative, but not this time. Director Andrew Dominik made an interesting choice, deciding to lay the cards on the table at the beginning of the film; to tell the audience right out who was killed, when he was killed, how he was killed, and by whom. Rather than spending energy trying to keep the audience guessing about those details, he exposed the characters.
In many ways The Assassination of Jesse James is a character study. As we get to know these men their motives become crystal clear, until the conclusion isn’t just the natural one, it’s the only one that makes sense.
First of all, let’s talk about the good Mr. Pitt. In a role that could have been played as a caricature of a bad guy or a misunderstood good guy, he walked the line between, showing Jesse’s changing moods and complex point of view. Make no mistake, Jesse James was a bad motha, but there was more to him than that. He was a family man, a practical joker. In the end, he was unable to integrate the two opposing personalities.
I’m actually surprised at the maturity of Brad Pitt’s work here. One of the producers for the film, Pitt was clearly passionate about the part, and that passion shines through. The most impressive part, though, is that he was willing to step out of the limelight and give Casey Affleck (below) room to stretch in his portrayal too. And his work in The Assassination of Jesse James is just as impressive as I was told.
Affleck the Younger appears as Bob Ford. This guy’s a little terrifying, of the stalker variety. His voice falters and cracks as his youth and inexperience show themselves. He knows everything about Jesse James, he’s catalogued the ways in which he’s like Jesse James, he’s clipped newspaper articles about Jesse James, and now he’s got himself a spot in the James gang.
The only problem is that the real Jesse James is nowhere near as captivating and amazing and super-cool as the Jesse James in Bob’s head. And that’s where the problems begin. As it becomes clear that the real Jesse doesn’t want to be Bob’s BFF, he becomes slightly and calmly unhinged, agreeing to deliver Jesse James to the government.
There’s one more major character in The Assassination of Jesse James, and he’s Charley Ford, Bob’s older brother. Played by Sam Rockwell (above), Charley doesn’t work just as comic relief, though he was certainly that. I recognized Rockwell from his turn as Stella‘s fake mustache dealer Gary Meadows, so I was ready for all-laughs all-the-time, but not so in this film. Charley is a tragic, almost Shakespearean character as well, using his natural humor to break the tension, becoming darker and darker as the movie progressed.
Art direction was instrumental in the film’s success. Whereas most films are more than happy to move you from one scene to the next with no thought to transition, Dominek set the mood with the fast-motion interstitials showing fields of snow as the sun moved from east to west. He used large, almost graphic elements to shape the mood. One of my favorites was the focus on the spoon in a cup of tea as Jesse learns of Bob Liddil’s capture. The narrator’s voice calmly gives the facts of the case, reducing major developments to dispassionate recitation. Here the first lines of the film set the tone for the next two and a half hours.
He was growing into middle age, and was living then in a bungalow on Woodland Avenue. He installed himself in a rocking chair and smoked a cigar down in the evenings as his wife wiped her pink hands on an apron and reported happily on their two children. His children knew his legs, the sting of his mustache against their cheeks. Rooms seemed hotter when he was in them. Rains fell straighter. Clocks slowed. Sounds were amplified. He considered himself a Southern loyalist and guerrilla in a Civil War that never ended. He regretted neither his robberies, nor the seventeen murders that he laid claim to. He had seen another summer under in Kansas City, Missouri and on September 5th in the year 1881, he was thirty-four-years-old.
Finally, there’s the music. The score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis is somber and cold. Emphasizing the inevitable march to Jesse James’s murder, the music under the interstitials is carried by a slow, steady drumbeat, with simple melody on piano and violin chanting above, leading us to the inevitable slaughter.
Oddly enough, I was almost surprised when the killing happened. I almost expected Robert Ford to drop the gun that Jesse had given him. Maybe Charley would kill his brother to save his friend. Maybe they would just leave Jesse James to live on with his wife and children. That would have been the happy ending.
But as we know, happy endings rarely come true in life.
