Fatal Gravitation

Rating: 9/10 (19 July 2010)

Less the title doesn't make it clear, the voice over narration explicitly states the direction this movie is turning from frame one, so here is a movie nigh impossible to discuss in terms of spoilers. Nevertheless, the awareness of the direction the movie is going is, sincerely, the movie's greatest gift. Using Roger Deakon's amazing cinematography, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis' gorgeous music, and the acting talents of Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck, director Dominick makes his mark with a singularly meditative film that pulls the audience along like gravity at ground zero--possibly not noticed, maybe even taken for granted, but a sure and constant force.
For me, the thing I liked about it the most was Jesse James' death AS the process of the whole movie; Brad Pitt blankly, almost fatalistically, gets on the chair like a man at the hanging, and this surreal sense of acknowledgement is foreshadowed in the the structure of the movie as the narrator starts it out with an obituary and Robert Ford blesses Jesse for his birthday: within five minutes the movie itself sets the length of Jesse's life. He knows when his time is up as assuredly as the audience, and we all participate.
Which is why the idea of Ford as "The Coward Robert Ford" is so interesting. This movie could almost be called "Sympathy for Robert Ford", except that as Frank James says so early on in the movie, there's something not quite right about him. Contrasting Jesse James and Robert Ford as described in this movie, both of them are nearly sociopathic--except James because he lacks shame and remorse, and Ford because he suffers from an abundance of it. Whereas the world is populated by so many Western genre types, Robert and Jesse as portrayed by Affleck and Pitt stand out for a singular awareness of what their characters mean--but this is not a bad performance choice, it is an uncanny clairvoyance within the characters that makes this movie tug the suspense along when the ending is already known and the scenes slowly unfold at a contemplative pace.
The only thing I didn't like about it was it suffered malignantly from Too Many Endings Syndrome, a particular affliction of many a contemporary director. The movie should have faded out on the famous still of James and the rest of the information given in an intertitle, if at all. I do not honestly believe Ford's confession, two song and dance routines, and another assassination really did anything the movie had not fully explored and expressed by the time the aforementioned still was shown on-screen. I also think that in almost sympathizing with Ford, the ending removes some of the ambiguity that truly makes the character more heroic and interesting, which is what the narrator tries to do.
I did not know about the four hour cut until after I saw the movie, and by all means I would be very interested in seeing it, though I really hope (and am probably not far off) that most of that material is before, not after, the assassination proper.
--PolarisDiB