He was growing into middle age, and was living then in a bungalow on Woodland Avenue.

Rating: 8/10 (24 February 2016)

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is one of those works of art that betray their plot details in their own title. It's a tricky thing to pull off, but in this instance it is an integral element in viewing the film. The title itself, and the words of the source material have become legend, and legend is often mistaken for fact. The narrator speaks with an air of authority as if he were talking in a documentary, recording history as it happened with an eye for objectivity. Roger Deakins stacks lenses on top of each other and blurs the edges of the frame in crucial moments, mimicking the deterioration of older photographs taken with the collodion process, or if you want to go further back, a scrap of parchment, its edges being burnt away along with the story it tells. It creates the feeling of a faded, aged narrative that is being passed down in history - and like so many stories, it has been shaped and morphed by each mouth and each stroke of the pen, until it becomes an entirely different account.
So to call what occurs an assassination would be an exaggeration to say the least; that implies a meticulous and calculated affair rather than the sudden gunshot that shocks the housewife in the other room. It certainly has a tinge of romanticism to it, and feels like something that Jesse James has concocted in his slow descent into paranoia and madness - to feel so mighty of himself that he must not merely be shot in the head, but accounted and taken care of via a precise assassination. Why else would he attempt to desperately stage something so dramatic and theatrical in his last moments, as he stares into the reflection of his soon to be killer? This is Pitt at his best; increasingly ragged and spent, like a powerful lion past its prime and mane and muscles fading. His bursts of anger and obsession only thinly disguise what everyone knows; that sooner or later his notoriety will get the better of him, and even loyalty or admiration (from his biggest fan, no less) will not be an obstacle on that day. And through his efforts, that killer is branded a coward.
His name is Robert Ford, and he has idolised the legend ever since he was a kid. Casey Affleck is more than competent; in a moment of starstruck admiration, James admits that the stories are embellished at best and lies at worst, and his world is momentarily shattered - but of course to win his affection he composes himself and hastily laughs it off. But it is a crucial blow, because he slowly discovers the myths surrounding figures such as James, and how they can be much more invincible than the person themselves. In another vulnerable moment, he is jeered at and threatened by senior members of the gang, and attempts to establish his own aura of intimidation, but instead his voice just slightly cracks, betraying his youth. This is just as false as his later cockiness and new-found confidence after what is presumably his first ever kill. Meanwhile, he resumes his obsession with the outlaw Jesse James, and tries to construct his own legend...ah, but these forces are beyond his control.
Deakins' work has been praised again and again - his vignetted frames force a focus unlike any other. A conversation between a man and Jesse James becomes fiercely surveyed by Robert, in dead centre. A weathered outlaw, once the brightest of lights, is silhouetted by a fading sunset. He makes the landscapes barren and harsh, rivalling the very power of Malick's Days of Heaven. A key scene involving the robbery of a train is often mentioned. It is a short but chilling sequence, heightened by the lack of light but for the one swinging lamp of Jesse James and the beam of the train itself, unknowingly casting strands of light among the trees where the haunting, ghostly figures lie. It would be nothing without Ellis and Cave's score; the mournful strings slowly but surely ushering the innocents into the gang's out-stretched hands. They return again and again to that thudding baseline, like a heartbeat painfully reaching for another moment of life, and that fairytale-like piece in 'Song for Jesse' with its twinkling xylophone that together with the narration makes it feel as if a storybook was being unveiled to us, page by page. As he drowns his face in cold water and prepares to kill his idol, a shrill, siren-like sound effect permeates Robert's mind, and he can barely focus on the conversation (she asks him his portion size, but almost anything feels like an accusation at this point, as his guilt builds) at hand.
And yet, it doesn't feel complete. For all the thematic focus on the morphing of myth and the twisting of tales by word of mouth and legend, in the end it is the narrator who does most of this heavy lifting as he elaborates on the coward's subsequent downfall. Eloquent as it is, it often takes whole paragraphs out of Hansen's novel, and this has an overpowering effect. The few scenes post-assassination flicker past the branding of his shame, when they should linger. Eight hundred performances, once agonising, as the ghost of Jesse James taunts Robert at failing in becoming his successor, flashes by in a single moment, ironically taming its emotional potency. A cameo from Zooey Deschanel attempts to uncover new ground, but is futile. This area is curiously unexplored, almost like a tacked on denouement. But then again, don't all rumours and legends originate from a blurred, indistinct source?