The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford

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In 2007, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford became a casualty of that not completely uncommon Hollywood phenomenon which sees several films of a similar genre being completed and released in close proximity. Though generally lauded by the critics who saw it, Andrew ‘Chopper’ Dominik’s second feature arrived then departed from cinema screens very much off the general radar, condemned to relative obscurity by the attention hogging, award sweeping likes of No Country for Old Men andThere Will Be Blood.

Maybe it was that title, maybe it was the lengthy gestation period, maybe it was just one handlebar moustache too many in that bumper year for the revisionist western, but something or someone seemed to  be conspiring to ensure the film didn’t receive half the attention it should have. And that’s a travesty, for you see, not only doesAssassination(which we’ll call it from here for the sake of word counts) stand toe to toe with any Coen or Anderson magnum opus, it is quite simply one of the best films of the last decade and easily in the quick-draw for most unique western of all time.

It’s also ironic that a film, which seemed destined to suffer in anonymity deals with the fraught final days of late nineteenth century America’s most notorious outlaw.

Jesse James has, like many figures of folk-lore, endured numerous incarnations through the years, though Hollywood has chosen to uphold the more marketable tales full of daring do, portraying the James gang as freedom fighters against ruthless railroad barons, much like the dime novels of the age which glamorised the James legend.

From the outset of Assassination, with its music-box of a prologue introducing aging civil war vet, family man and killer Jesse James (Brad Pitt), it’s obvious Dominik’s version of the story aims to debunk the popular myth. However, neither does the director want to extrapolate all the mystery from the man and so ensures that James will remain, despite a most intimate dissection, something of an unknown quantity.

Dominik achieves this in part by following the non linear structure of the novel of the same name by Ron Hansen. An incredibly atmospheric depiction of the Blue Cut train robbery that was to be the James gang’s last felonious act serves as the point at which several story strands branch off, with the main strand seen though the infatuated eyes of the young Robert Ford (Casey Affleck); new initiate to the gang and a man who gives Jesse’s older brother Frank (an excellent Sam Shepard) ‘the willies’.
The complex relationship between James and Ford stands front and centre, though it’s a relationship which is defined as much as when they are apart as when they are together. Often, Pitt is present in the background, just out of shot, or is absent from scenes entirely. When he is on screen however, his acting is nothing short of genius.

By turns fascinating, funny and shit-the-bed intense, he plays Jesse as a paranoid schizophrenic, sickened by thoughts of betrayal and existential pondering brought about by a heightened awareness of the looming shadow of death. Watch how he plays upon his role as idol whilst simultaneously spurning and even ridiculing Bob, fueling the young obsessive’s embittered desire for his own greatness. When Pitt pierces into the soul of the accused with his ice-blue eyes for any sign of disloyalty, we too are transfixed, studying his every languid movement, his every twitchy lip smack. It is without doubt his best performance yet.

As you might expect, the impression of death hangs heavy in Assassination – you’ll find no rootin’ or tootin’ here. It is an extremely cerebral film, ever so committed to the slow burn and happy to take its pensive, broody time.

Some will be turned off by the film’s meandering and melancholic rambling, while others will suggest it’s too long (an accusation far from slanderous for a running time of 2hrs 45m). But the unrushed pace combined with the ethereal cinematography of Roger Deakins, the stunning locations and the almost painfully haunting score from Nick Cave serve to create an alluring, if foreboding, dream-like quality.

Though the pull of the titular assassination is ever apparent, our prior knowledge of the outcome doesn’t diminish the script’s dramatic weight, but rather enhances it. Tension is maintained despite our omniscience by the film mirroring the sporadic style of Hansen’s book, with sequences shown in episodic fashion. We might join the Ford brothers laying low in their winter residence one minute, then return to Jesse on the trail of missing gang members another. Much of the time scenes involve little else other than characters talking to each other and many do without dialogue altogether, leaving only an actor’s expression in extreme close up to tell the tale. The unyielding drift towards the inevitable conclusion sees each mesmeric image laden with more and more tragic portends. All the while a myriad of seemingly arbitrary details are reeled off at intervals by an unnamed narrator, whose detached delivery ties a peculiar sense of gravitas from one scene to the next.

The death of James doesn’t signal the end either. Rather, the final quarter of the film lays on the dourness in eulogising Robert Ford’s final days. It’s here that Casey Affleck, alongside a sublime Sam Rockwell as Ford’s troubled brother Charlie, proves he is every part Pitt’s equal, enshrining Bob as a man consumed with a palpable sense of regret, shunned by society as a despicable traitor and left to bear the inner quandaries of his soul alone. It is a masterful performance which belies the youthfulness of Affleck’s physical presence, but is perfectly complimented by it, shedding gloomy light on the fickle nature of celebrity and the disparity between the internal and external forces at work upon us all.

In what has to be one of the most moving conclusions to any film, Dominik reveals where our sympathies are supposed to lie only right at the very end, when the last image fades, the narrator rolls off the final words and the double entendre of that ponderous, ingenious ten word title finally becomes clear.