A western unlike any other you may have seen

Rating: 10/10 (11 January 2008)

Revisionist westerns are nothing new. They have been around since the fifties when directors realized they could be used to explore motives and psychologies deeper than conventional good guy versus bad guy histrionics. In 1969 Hollywood gave us two radical 'revisionist' westerns in which the style of the movie itself was used to subvert the genre. Although radically different in tone, both George Roy Hill's "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch" seemed to signal, if not quite the death of the genre, then a move away from the kind of western Hollywood had been giving us thus far. Since then, of course, westerns have been few and far between but all of them seem to have been influenced by this departure.
Perhaps "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" moves further away than most from the traditional format. It certainly looks traditional. Roger Deakins' stunning cinematography vividly captures, not just the wide open spaces, but the dark, lamp-lit interiors to great effect. And it sounds traditional as well. The writer, Andrew Dominik, who also directed the film, in adapting Ron Hansen's source novel, has given full voice to the quaintly idiomatic dialogue of those times. In this respect it is much more traditional than many westerns of the thirties, forties or fifties. In every other respect it qualifies, in spades, for the term 'revisionist'.
For a start there is little action. This is no gun-slinging oater but a long, (160 minutes), slow, deliberate character piece. When the film begins Jesse's life is almost over. The narrator tells us of his past deeds and what has brought him to this point. He also fills us in on the psychology of the man with Brad Pitt filling in the rest with a superb, career-defining performance. This is not the Jesse James of legend, (although, of course, in the film he is accorded legendary status); no Robin Hood figure robbing the rich and giving it to the poor but a pathologically unstable man, no longer a boy yet without maturity. His brother Frank, (a superb but under-used Sam Shepard), is like a gnarled father-figure to him. This Jesse is an outlaw first and foremost, a cold-blooded killer destined to live on the hop or be hunted down and killed.
Perhaps it is this lack of maturity that draws him to the even more immature Robert Ford. It has been noted that this version of events is really a study in celebrity or rather a study of the perils that celebrity brings. Ford is the ultimate fan but a fan whose final act of homage is to destroy the star to whom he's drawn. At one point Jesse says to him 'I don't know if you want to be like me or want to be me'. It also could be argued that Ford was homosexually attracted to Jesse were it not for the fact he comes over as such a pathetically asexual creature, at least while Jesse is still alive. Rather he becomes Jesse's whipping-boy and you may think, 'is it any wonder the worm has turned'.
Much of the film's two hour forty minute running time is taken up with talk and talk that seeks to explore the psychosis of its protagonists. I can understand why this won't be to everybody's taste. We live in an action-fueled age and have short attention spans. This is a film that demands a lot from its audience and amply rewards us. It is a beautifully crafted movie, intelligent and thought-provoking. Dominik's influences range from Peckinpah and Eastwood to Terrence Mallick yet the film seems wholly original, unlike anything in the genre we may have encountered before.
If Pitt is a superb, taciturn Jesse then Casey Affleck is a mesmerizing Robert Ford. It's a great performance from this young and basically untried actor who, in every gesture, in the flicker of his eyes, in the faltering speech, inhabits the part entirely, as much in his mind as in his body. He has already won a number of critic's prizes for his performance but is unlikely to pick up the Oscar. The Academy prefers showier displays which is why this magnificent film is unlikely to prove a success either at the Oscars or with the public at large.