There was a time when stately, elegaic, artfully shot and leisurely paced films not unlike Andrew Dominik's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford were made by major studios, given major awards, and praised by critics and audiences alike. Granted, this time was before I was born, so I'm taking the word of respected elders, the so-called Movie Brats, and the good folks over at the Criterion Collection. Maybe it's true that populist entertainment has always been populist entertainment, and thoughtful works have always had a marginalized audience, but it certainly seems like poetic character studies of this ilk have become fewer, farther between, and certainly less publicized.
Casey Affleck stars as Robert Ford, a nineteen year old enamored of the legendary exploits of Jesse James (Brad Pitt), already a mythical anti-hero by thirty-four. As Affleck plays him, Ford is shy, socially awkward, and caught up in the mythology of the James Gang far more than the realities of it. He keeps a box of clippings and souveneirs of James in a shoebox under his bed, both proud of and embarrassed by his collection, as an adolescent might be of his stack of Playboys. He fetishizes the life of an outlaw into a profession far more noble than it actually is; ultimately, he is little more than an opportunist. The James brothers see through him; Frank (Sam Shepherd) wisely stays away.
As the film progresses, the silences that punctuate the increasingly strained conversations grow. So too do the unspoken thoughts and emotions of all parties involved. These are thieves who were not thick to begin with, and their trust in one another is tenuous at best. Ford grows to despise James. As James tells Ford, the stories he's read in the papers and the sensationalist paperbacks he's collected since childhood are all lies. The reality of life outside the law is far less romantic than Ford had imagined, and, understandably so, James is not as welcoming to his skittish admirer. Feeling rebuffed by his idol, Ford begins to feel that the only way to step out of the shadow into which he has placed himself is to turn against James.
Even though it features one of the greatest train robberies put to film, this is no action film. Instead, Dominik opts for a meditative study of inferiority, idolatry, revenge, and guilt. Affleck, who seems to age throughout the film, is excellent in the role. To watch his eccentricites and his forced smile shift from awkward and shy to malicious and deceitful is to witness a performance of unexpected subtlety and nuance. Pitt, too, is superb, playing James as a secret celebrity, just past his prime, whose measured generosity, omniscience, violence, and heartlessness coalesce into a singular being at once frightening and alluring. His jocularity is more unnerving than his cold blooded vengeance ever could be, for it is unexpected, unreliable, and often takes its delight in the least appropriate events and circumstances.
The rest of the cast is strong, even though many of the ancillary characters are utilized for little more than plot. (Composer Nick Cave is given an amusing scene as a troubador, but a cameo by James Carville as the governor is somewhat jarring and robs the film of some of its verisimilitude.) And with so many of them appearing sporadically and for such short periods of time, the film has some trouble maintaining the brilliance and tension of its first half hour throughout its second and third acts. The narration, too, is overused at times, occasionally overstating what can already be gathered from what is on screen. Though this is not a terrible oversight, it is strangely at odds with the subtlety of the rest of the screenplay. Still, what the film lacks in immediacy it makes up for in the way that it burrows under your skin, its themes refusing easy resolution even after the film has ended.
In another time, a film like this may have won a larger audience. It's measured restraint and its insistence on speaking more with silence is certainly not for all tastes. But for the patient and the thoughtful, there is much to be taken from the film, a great deal of which is morally ambiguous and left open to the viewer's interpretation. Not to mention, it's got one of the best titles of the year.