thought provoking cinema

Rating: 8/10 (12 September 2009)

This is director Andrew Dominik's meditation on fame, trust, the wages of sin, and the scary bond between love and hate, as played out by the legendary serial murderer Jesse James and his cohorts who caught the public's fancy during the post-Civil War westward expansion, just as Bonnie & Clyde and Dillinger did more than half a century later during the Great Depression.
One could think of this effort as a sort of action film on valium, as it laconically traces the final days of the disintegrating James gang by exploring the crumbling relationships of its members under the pressure of law enforcement efforts to bring them to justice.
Some have pointed out a resemblance to the films of Terrence Malick (which I can understand, especially Days of Heaven and Badlands) but I was also reminded throughout of Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller by the photography, gritty physical environment, linguistically archaic banter laced with jokes, melancholy and sparse musical scoring, and the parallels between Brad Pitt here and Warren Beatty in the earlier film (similar beards, behavioral quirks like a snorting laugh, line readings, and even a resemblance between their respective nostrils). But whereas Altman's vision was chaotic and fuzzy, Dominik's is merely ambiguous but sharply focused.
The way James is presented we simultaneously loathe him for his brutal crimes and pity him for the pathetic corner into which his wicked deeds have backed him. Throughout the film he appears to alternate between trust and mistrust of his companions, and between sadistic misbehavior towards other human beings and loving care for his own immediate family until finally he allows fate to take its course – during Easter week no less, in a twisted retelling of the Passion whereby he is finally felled by "the coward Robert Ford" after he himself knocks off others in his gang whom he suspects of betrayal. Even this scene is edited so that we can't be quite sure what happened and who did what to whom.
But the movie doesn't end with James's demise. It follows his killer, Ford, through his post- James career as theatrical re-enactor of the incident that brought him to prominence, and forward from there to his own ultimate celebrity-driven destiny.
Dominik is helped enormously by the set and costume designers whose artistry steeps us in the look and feel of the mid-American late 19th century. And the cinematography of Roger Deakins constantly fascinates and surprises. All of this is held together by a lean, matter-of- fact but pointed narration by Hugh Ross which evokes Sissy Spacek's in Malick's Badlands and lends a formality and framework to the narrative.
All the acting is top notch, including a brief bit by (of all people) James Carville, who fits into the late 19th century like a hand into a glove. But Casey Affleck's performance as Robert Ford is the standout: absolutely mesmerizing as he progresses from hero worship to bitter disillusionment in his relationship with James (Brad Pitt). But I got the feeling that any of the actors would have stood out as impressively, given the equivalent screen exposure.
The director's original cut was 4 hours, but economic pressures evidently forced him to excise about 75 minutes. I can only wonder how the original vision was affected by this trimming. The release cut does drag in places, but this pacing problem could have been the result of excision of important connective material that would have given compelling context to puzzling or otherwise uninvolving stretches. Seeing a director's cut will tell the tale.