A Poetic Elegy

Rating: 3/10 (24 September 2007)

I just saw The Assassination of Jesse James this afternoon in New York. While I had an interesting cinematic experience, it was not completely satisfying.
The film is meditative, poetic and elegiac. Which is to say that it moves at a slow pace and is somewhat obtuse. It is neither Peckinpah nor Sergio Leone, for that type of movie western you'll have to see 3:10 to Yuma.
The film is not bad, it did hold my interest. But in the hands of a better director it would have become a true modern day classic like Eastwood's Unforgiven. Brad Pitt is very good in the role and Casey Affleck is great at creating a character that you love to hate; a truly breakthrough performance.
I keep wanting to call The assassination of Jesse James an "existentialist Western." The only other film that I have given that designation to was El Topo, although the two films have absolutely nothing in common. While Unforgiven was a meditation on the nature of violence and killing, Assassination of JJ is a meditation on the pit falls of celebrity, even among the notorious.
The cinematography is the best that I've seen this year and hearkens back to the work of Nestor Almendros on Malick's Days of Heaven. Roger Deakins will be remembered at Oscar time.
I've often said that a great film by a mediocre director is not as interesting as a mediocre film by a great director. The Assassination of Jesse James falls somewhere in the middle, it's a good film by a director whose best work is yet to come