The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Jonathan Valin -- Mon, 10/29/2007 - 23:00
Not only is this the best movie thus far of this promising year, it is the best Western in about 40 years. This is a film that Terrence Malick might have made, back in his heyday of Badlands. It is, at once, that hauntingly poetic and startlingly prosaic. I can't say enough about Brad Pitt (I can't believe I just wrote that line), who gives far and away the finest performance of his career as James, and Casey Affleck as Ford. Or about Roger Deakins marvelous cinemaotography which, at moments, apes pinhole photography, almost like a visual metaphor for a past that can no longer be brought fully into focus. Or for Nick Cave's great score.
This film, which I went to see a second time with two savvy friends (both of whom also thought it a masterpiece), casts the unique, almost supernatural spell that you sometimes felt when you were a child paging through an old book, as if you were touching history with your hands and your eyes and your mind.
Do yourselves a favor and see this, while you still can, in a good theater. I fear it will lose some of its magic on a small screen.
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I finally saw this film on a screener DVD in on my home theater system. It is beautifully shot and well acted. Yes, there is a Terrence Malick quality at work here, in both feeling and look, along with a Matthew Brady quality to the images. I couldn't find fault with the production design, it's impeccable in it's attention to detail.
Still I found myself thinking that this was less a western that I was watching, and more a meditation on celebrity disguised as a western. Stagecoach, Red River, The Wild Bunch, The Long Riders, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, I rank those films among the great western. They work not only as compelling stories, but are also entertaining as hell. While this film is painstaking in it's detail and exposition, it ultimately gets boring. When the killing of Jesse finally comes, I found myself saying "It's about time." Then the film goes on much longer than it should have, showing what happened to Ford and his brother Charlie in the years following the event. This is not so much a western as a warning about the price of fame as Ken Burns would have conceived it.
In my opinion, the two best films I've seen recently are Charlie Wilson's War and American Gangster. Both films are examples of great storytelling by directors who know how to craft highly entertaining, compelling films. And when the awards are finally given out, with or without TV coverage, No Country for Old Men will be there.
Larry,
It's difficult to respond to someone who finds something you truly think is a profound masterpiece "boring." All I can say is that I did not find it boring. In fact, I found it magical, as if a spell had been laid on me for the three hours the movie runs—a spell that has stayed with me (and others who love the film as much as I do) ever since. The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford opens a crack in the wall of time past, allowing us a glimpse into a famous act of violence, a murder that appears simple and simply motivated now but that was, in fact, at once as prosaic as a street killing and as mysterious and mythic as the murder of a king. Very few movies have had this effect on me, but then very few movies are this ambitious or this successful at achieving their ambitions.
The film isn't merely a meticulous recreation of the Border States of the 1880s and of the last weeks of the life of Jesse James (and, after that, in a long, lyrical, ultimately heartbreaking epilogue, of the "coward" Robert Ford), it is a meditation not on the price of fame but on its crushing burden and on the way the “meaning of the past” slowly solidifies around one set of footprints, while all the myriad others are blown away like dust. The Assassination of Jesse James—which isn't so much an assassination as the suicide of a burned-out man sick to death of being "Jesse James," followed by the short-lived ascension to celebrity of his killer, who then is himself all-too-quickly ensnared in the fatality of being "Robert Ford" —is, I think, a genuinely great movie that tells us something sad, teasing, and true about the way history is spun out of the whirl of time and ambitious men, about how legendary heroes and villains are created out of ordinary clay.
What you found “boring,” I found beautiful, profound, and intensely moving.
I haven’t seen Charlie Wilson’s War, but I did see American Gangster and quickly realized that I’d seen it half-a-dozen times before.
Jon,
We're at risk of becoming the Ebert and Roeper of Avguide.com! I enjoy the fact that we have different tastes in cinema and look at the same films in different ways. I think we both agree that Roger Deakins' cinematography was exceptional, as was the production design of Patricia Norris. I wasn't thrilled with Andrew Dominik's direction, right now he's a journeyman director at best. Maybe it's because that's what I watch a film for and get to vote on during awards season, directorial achievement.
Along those lines, the DGA nominated films for Best Directorial Achievement are: There Will Be Blood Dir: Paul Thomas Anderson, No Country For Old Men Dir: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, Michael Clayton Dir: Tony Gilroy, Into The Wild Dir: Sean Penn, and The Diving Bell and The Butterfly Dir: Julian Schnabel. We've both voiced our opinions about No Country For Old Men, however I'm wondering what you think about the other four films that are nominated.
Larry
Larry,
Given the performances he got from Pitt and Affleck (and everyone else) and the remakrably intelligent, hauntingly beautiful film he made, I think Dominik did a superb job of direction!
Of the films the DGA nominated, I thought Michael Clayton was a clunky, well-intentioned liberal meller with a preposterously cliche script and a very fine and sincere performance from George Clooney; you know how I felt about No Country (and I'm a Coen Bros. fan); I did not see Into The Wild, not because I don't think Penn isn't a talented director (I very much liked The Pledge) but because the Krakauer book left a bad taste about Chris McCandless, who struck me a suicidal idiot who got pretty much what he deserved (save for the book written about him), and I was afraid that Penn would romanticize him; I have not seen The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, though the subject matter frankly makes me fidgety and I didn't much like Before Night Falls, Schnabel's last (and I thought overrated) effort; There Will Be Blood is truly psychotic filmmaking, like a cross between Citizen Kane and, oh, Alien, but I liked it (a lot) and thought DDL gave a truly sensational performance as Daniel "I'm Finished" Plainview.
If you want to know the 5 films I thought should have been nominated by the DGA in 2007 (with the proviso that I haven't seen Diving Bell or Juno, yet), they would be:
1) The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
2) The Lives of Others
3) There Will Be Blood
4) Eastern Promises
5) Zodiac
Jon, I agree with three on your list: There Will Be Blood, Eastern Promises, and Zodiac. I got an interesting insight today on DDL's performance. My wife and I had coffee this afternoon with an actress who dated John Huston. Our friend said that the character was based on him. and that DDL was a dead ringer for him in speech, mannerisms, facial expressions, etc. I remembered hearing similar stories about Huston's mannerisms and behavior from Susan Tyrell.
Getting back to the films, There Will Be Blood has images that stay with you long after you leave the theater, and I think DDL will walk away with the Oscar for Best Actor. Eastern Promises was one of better written films this year. David Cronenberg keeps extending his range as a director, and never repeats himself. Zodiac was under-appreciated when it was released. David Fincher managed to out creep himself, and at the same time get great performances from Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey, Jr.
Most over-rated film this year? By far Atonement.
Well, you already know what my pick for most overrated film of the year would be, but Atonement would be in the running for place or show.
Eastern Promises wasn't just well written. If it weren't for DDL, Viggo Mortensen would've been my pick for Best Actor--what a job he did (twice now in a row). Mark Ruffalo was also quite good in Zodiac; the wonderfully written, staged, and acted scene between him, the other two cops, and John Carroll Lynch is a genuine creep-out classic.
As for DDL and John Huston...several critics have drawn the comparsion between DDL's Daniel and the Noah Cross character that Huston played in Chinatown.
Having just seen Juno, I would have to put it right up there with Atonement and No Country among "most overrated." How in the world this admittedly cute, entirely fraudulent bit of fluff got nominated for Best Picture is one of those mysteries you folks in the industry will have to explain to me (and to God on Judgment Day).
If you want to read an intelligent review of Juno, go to http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/bal-to.juno21dec21,0,4631572.story, where my brilliant friend, the Baltimore Sun and New Yorker movie reviewer Michael Sragow, makes appropriate mincemeat of this phony.
I agree Jon, Juno is a poseur, and so is it's screenwriter, Diablo Cody. She really should turn in her keyboard and go back to her original occupation of stripper. Hopefully, she's more talented in that line of work, but I doubt it. Sundance hype from last year, a lot of advertising on MTV, a good publicist, and a few critics who don't know you-know-what from Shinola trying to create, this years Little Miss Sunshine our of thin air, that's all it takes to make a indie film like this one a hit and a nominee. I imagine young voters in The Academy championing this one, no other reason I can see for it being there.
BTW, I was glad to see Viggo Mortensen nominated and agree that he did a great job in the role.