Poetic melancholy or deep regret? What keeps pulling me in? (spoiler warning, if you have never seen this American classic, probably the best Western ever made in my lifetime, you really need to buy this now!)
There’s such a hopelessness about it, isn’t there?
How a man can grow up idolising his hero, be fortunate enough to get closer to him than even his own wife and children, then butcher him cruelly down in an act of extreme cowardice, a cold blooded murderer which haunts him for the rest of his miserable life.
Life does not get much bleaker than that.
Or was the killing of James an act of mercy? Was it a suicide, even though Jesse didn’t pull the trigger?
Regardless, two men died on that day, one would be remembered in popular folklore and be obsessed over, one wouldn’t.
I’ve seen THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD three times, constantly amazed at how gripped I am by it’s timeless setting, the meticulous use of historical myth and legend, the magisterial performances and just how coherent the narrative is despite the problems director Andrew Dominik had with the studio over the cutting of the film.
He aimed for Malick (the infamous 4 hour cut shown once at the Venice Film Festival which was hailed a “majestic” masterpiece) the studio wanted Leone but he finally delivered a 70’s revisionist Western that if it were made in 1973, it would be have the stature of an absolute classic right now. It was an all too familiar case of wrong time, right movie.
That’s not to say I’m not begging to see what his four hour cut would have looked like, because I really am and hopefully one day we will find out.
Why do I feel so much for Bob, why do I get the lump in the back of my throat, everytime I hear the wonderful narrator speak out the words “Edward O’Kelly came up from Bachelor at 1pm on the 8th”. Why do my sympathises lie so much with Bob?
Is it because the narrator is partly wrong at the end when he mentions no biographies would be written about him? If anything this movie is Bob’s story, a love letter to him in so many more ways than Ron Hansen’s popular original novel and the big hug you feel like Ford needed his own damn life.
How fascinated I am by the scenes, the twenty minutes that come once we have buried Jesse James. You rarely see this kind of thing in biopics. It’s unlike anything been made today.
How different, would say MILK have been if, as I thought we should have seen, we witnessed the madness that plagued Dan White (Josh Brolin) once he had finished his all too brief prison sentence? Where the murder of such a likable figure plagued his nights, everytime he tried to escape life with dreams or nightmares of some place else.
Is it because it would then become Dan White’s film and the Oscar for Best Lead would have gone to him? Would our sympathies switch to Dan White, if he were the lead?
The film would sure be a less hopeful one.
6 Comments
I loved this film. thanks for the blog.
Yea this is my favorite western made in my lifetime and I really wish more people would see this and give it a chance and that 4 hour film would be amazing to see. Great article you should do things like this and the Watchmen thoughts more often.
While I dont dispute it being probably the best Western of our generation, it has to be noted that it doesnt exactly have any significant competition. I mean, the YOUNG GUNS movies werent bad, TOMBSTONE was okay, WYATT EARP wasnt so bad, and nor were the more recent offerings of 3:10 TO YUMA or SERAPHIM FALLS, but none of them were really good. The only one I can think of that I really enjoyed at the time (I might add that my opinion of it may be rose-tinted by the amount of years that have passed since I saw it) was Sam Raimi’s THE QUICK AND THE DEAD. Not the same kind of poignant emotional depth, but some good performances in there.
CITY SLICKERS though- now that’s a movie!
I enjoyed all the movies you mentioned, even Sam Raimi’s homage movie to ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST.
UNFORGIVEN let’s not forget either.
I also class NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and THERE WILL BE BLOOD as being in the spirit of the Westerns and even in movies like AMERICAN GANGSTER and MYSTIC RIVER, the feeling of the genre has been at an undercurrent.
The recent Viggo Mortensen and Ed Harris Western wasn’t too bad shabby either.
My favourite film of 2008. Its a must own on Blu-Ray. And dont forget the beautiful score by Nick Cave. Great Article
Have to say I was disappointed by this movie. Have read the book a few times, and, believe it, whatever it is you like about the film is there many times over, and better, in the book. The depth of Jesse James just isn’t there in the movie, whereas it is in the book. And the whole last section of what became of Bob Ford after Jesse’s murder is basically left out of the film (perhaps that’s some of what was cut out). It’s a fascinating story, and something that the movie just doesn’t really get into much. Please, read the book. You’ll see. Bob Ford’s final years were heartbreaking, strange, wild… The book is a classic. When I heard they were making it into a film, I just knew they’d never capture the poetry and true depth of the material. And they didn’t. Pitt’s never really comes across, and Affleck, while one of the better actors out there today, just seemed too old to play the character. Not into all of the remakes going on these days, but this is one I hope someone someday goes back to. From the source material, though, not this film itself.