| |
An extraordinary and visionary study
of a legendary murderer's famous fate, within touching
distance of Oscars.
Empire
This elegant, perceptive examination of the life and
death of Jesse James is also a striking study in the deadly
perils of hero worship
Philip French, Observer
Assassination? That's a pretty fancy way of referring
to the killing of one criminal by another. It's surely
more appropriate for the slaying of Abraham Lincoln, the
president loathed by Confederate holdouts of the old south
who worshipped the James boys as revenge-activists in
their sacred cause. But Andrew Dominik's slow-moving,
but gripping and tremendously observed picture about the
1882 murder of legendary scofflaw Jesse James has a self-possession,
even a grandeur, that persuades you that the word is justified.
Dominik sees Jesse James's killing as a political act
in that it was allegedly commissioned, on a nod and a
wink, by state authorities humiliated by their failure
to catch James, and reluctant to see him turned into a
martyr. It has its place in the pre-history of celebrity,
in that James was gunned down by an obsessive fan. It
even has a kind of biblical resonance: except everyone
in Jesse James's gang was Judas, including the leader.
Most of all, though, the movie is about a psychological
duel. As his career draws to an end, Jesse James becomes
aware of the impossibility of facing an increasingly vast
army of sheriffs, federal agents and Pinkerton men. He
senses that, inevitably, one of his gang will in any case
sell him out for a fat reward. Unwilling to give the lawmen
that satisfaction, James embraces his own death and subtly
cultivates the mercurial attentions of the most obviously
cringing and cowardly of his associates: 20-year-old Robert
Ford.
With the taunts and whims of a lover, he encourages Ford's
envious, murderous fascination, and grooms him as his
own killer, so that his own legend will be pristine after
his death. He engineers a character-assassination of Ford,
and the title, knowingly, gets it precisely the wrong
way around.
Brad Pitt is an excellent James, weary, lionised, disillusioned,
yet with an actor's technique and a sociopath's obsession
with control. Casey Affleck is outstanding, too, as Ford,
though I can't agree with the critical opinion elsewhere
expressed that he outclasses and upstages Pitt. With his
weird grin and disordered teeth in various shades of grey,
his supplicant mannerism of turning his hat round and
round by the brim, and his creepily exact knowledge of
everything about the legendary brothers, Affleck's Ford
really is a dangerous customer.
Sam Shepard has a nice cameo at the beginning of the film
as Jesse's elder brother Frank, coldly spurning Robert's
sycophantic request to be considered a regular member
of the gang. Cinematographer Roger Deakins intersperses
the action with unhurried still-life portraiture of chairs,
or lamps, or fences, sometimes presented with the distortion
and selective focus of the stereoscope souvenir pictures
that sold in their thousands after Jesse James's death.
This is a real success for New Zealand-born, Australian
director Dominik: he has immersed himself in a piece of
classic Americana, yet he brings to it an outsider's perspective
and shrewdness, in which the only false note is the use
of a supercilious third-person narrative voiceover, which
smudges the picture's crispness and clarity. There is
a bizarre anti-mysticism in Jesse James bringing on his
own death, like some parody-version of Thomas More or
Thomas Becket. A tremendously stylish, intelligent retelling
of western myth.
Interview with Director Andrew Dominik
|
|
| from www.firstshowing.net
|
|
How did you get involved in the project and why?
I just found the book in a bookstore and read it …and
I read the first page and just liked it.
And from there just…. Well, after the first
film I made (Chopper).. I write a number of screenplays
and I've never really come up with a part for a movie
star. So part of the attraction with Jesse James was to
cast a movie star and it would not be miscasting and the
celebrity would work for the part rather than against
it. And the book is just beautiful. I took it to Brad
and he said he wanted to do it and that was it, done deal.
How did you come across Casey Affleck and why did you
choose him for Robert Ford? I saw Casey in Gerry and
thought he was really good. I didn't know anything about
Casey. Obviously I'd seen to die for and stuff but I'd
never noticed him until that. And he looked a bit like
Bob and then he came in and read. A whole variety of people
came in and read but Casey was just fantastic.
|
|
