| The Assasination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford  [+ favourites]
I've been meaning to write a review of this movie for some time. However, it took me a few watches and a lot of thinking to really grasp what it was that I fully concluded about this film.
The film has good acting, in general. Brad Pitt plays his normal cool guy character and you could replace his Jesse James with his Achilles and aside from the accents it would be rather similar. This, I think, most people would have gone in expecting.
And although everyone in the film plays their characters modestly, really the only two characters that stuck out to me were the Ford brothers - played by Sam Rockwell and Casey Affleck. Sam doesn't get a chance to shine until the second half of the movie - but he is graceful to watch after that mark.
Casey is painful to watch throughout the movie - and that is the purpose. He is Robert Ford, the person that assasinates Jesse James.
This movie is relevant to me because of its mixed message. Most specifically, it seems the narrative was added AFTER the movie was made, and the narrative was engineered to make Robert Ford look like a coward and Jesse James to be the messiah. In fact, the narrative has clear flaws in it - it misrepresents many historical facts, mostly to promote the mentality I just mentioned.
This is an annoying persistence - throughout the movie it re-occurs, and throughout the movie the audience actually begins to like Robert Ford more and more. If not like, then sympathize, for his pain is the cage of his own insecurities, and we all want him to break free of them. Casey Affleck has much more screen time (it would seem) than Brad Pitt and for all intents and purposes, this movie is about Robert Ford, not Jesse James.
Brad PItt attempts to portray a Jesse James that is slowly losing it and going insane, but fails miserably. He seems to know exactly what is going on all the time, despite the narrative telling us about his dimentia. This is a failure on the part of Brad Pitt and although it doesn't make the movie painful (because Brad Pitt is pleasant to watch as a macho bad guy) it certainly fails to provide the dramatic effect that was intended by the original story.
This movie bothers me because of its sincere attempt to glorify a man like Jesse James while completely disregarding a man like Robert Ford - even though the film itself does not do this, the addition of the narrative makes it resoundingly obvious. In fact, without a narrative, the movie would let the audience themselves decide who is the cowards and who is not. I'm fairly certain the director wanted it that way, because he directed it that way. I'm fairly certain the producers pressed for a narrative that gave clear cut answers to who was bad and who was good.
But this was an art movie and wasn't made to generate income - it seems unlikely that it wasn't the director's choice to add the narrative. Additionally, it seems unlikely that the director would have made the narrative SO biased based on producer pressure.
The glamourization of Jesse James, and the comparison of him to the Sphinx are moments in the film that confuse the audience. Why? Because the film is so modest in the direction - it doesn't attempt to display Jesse James as a nice guy, and in fact makes him look like someone that may have deserved to be shot. Yet the narrative then suggests that he is some sort of Christ figure, or messiah, that knew something special or was a gifted soul of some sort.
Jesse James was, historically, a robber that robbed and killed - he did so for private financial benefit. He supported the south and disliked the "yanks", suggesting that he supported slavery and was probably a racist. This paints the picture of a closed minded redneck hillbilly that was just, as luck would have it, good at robbing and getting away with it, specifically in a state that did not seem very good at catching him.
And that is the reality of who Jesse James was, despite the legend that this movie seems to enjoy promoting. This is what bothers me the most - it keeps suggesting that because people got the wrong impression of Jesse James and held him up as a great man, that he WAS a great man. And Robert Ford was therefore such a coward for killing such a great man.
But, once you watch the film, you will realize that the dramatic storty of Robert Ford seems so much more fascinating than that of Jesse James. And the director himself seemed to know this because he directed it that way - Casey Affleck far outshone any of the other characters, save perhaps his brother played by Sam Rockwell.
"Hating everyone protects me from elitism."
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