Film in Focus

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Director: Andrew Dominik. Screenplay: Andrew Dominik, based on the novel by Ron Hanson. Cinematography: Roger Deakins. Film editing: Curtiss Clayton, Dylan Tichenor. Production design: Patricia Norris. Music: Nick Cave, Warren Ellis. Producers: Jules Daly, Dede Gardner, Brad Pitt, Ridley Scott, David Valdes. With: Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Sam Rockwell, Paul Schneider, Sam Shepard, Jeremy Renner, Mary-Louise Parker, James Carville, Zooey Deschanel, Kailin See, Garret Dillahunt, Brooklynn Proulx, Dustin Bollinger, Tom Aldredge, Martha Bolton, Lauren Calvert, Jesse Frechette, Pat Healy, Michael Parks, Ted Levine, Michael Copeman, Laryssa Yanchak, voice of Hugh Ross. USA. 158 min. 2007.

By David Sterritt

The title tells all, before the movie even starts. Dispensing with standard narrative suspense is just one of many artistic coups that make this arguably the best western since Robert Altman’s classic “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” way back in 1971.

In place of ordinary suspense, writer-director Andrew Dominik offers enormous amounts of narrative tension, which builds to multiple climaxes in individual scenes while gathering strength for a rich culmination shortly before the finale, followed by a denouement of great and melancholy power. The result is simultaneously an engrossing genre piece, a sensitive psychological study—the title characters aren’t the only ones with complex and contradictory personalities that eventually do them in—and, most surprisingly, an exploration of celebrity culture as practiced a century ago, revolving around Robert Ford’s romantic view of the outlaw who becomes his friend and then his foe while remaining his enigmatic ego ideal throughout.

Roger Deakins has been one of Hollywood’s most expressive cinematographers for decades, and his work here is unsurpassed, capturing the look and feel of the Old West with a warmth and vividness that few films have equaled since John Ford’s glory days. But both Dominik and Deakins have to share credit with an enormously talented cast. Brad Pitt gives an authentic, three-dimensional performance as Jesse James, and Casey Affleck is a revelation as Ford the so-called coward, projecting a strikingly curious persona that combines the doggedness of a dullard, the naïveté of a child, the subservience of a sycophant, and the thinly veiled wiliness of an utterly amoral scoundrel. Affleck’s performance here, paired with his riveting work in Ben Affleck’s savvy melodrama “Gone Baby Gone,” which premiered at virtually the same time, marks his emergence as one of the most gifted character actors in film today. (Full disclosure: Casey was a student of mine at Columbia University, and I like to think I taught him every single thing he knows. As if.)

Nor does the excellent acting stop with the leads. Sam Shepard is pitch-perfect in the very small role of Jesse’s brother Frank James; Sam Rockwell is ditto as Robert’s brother Charley Ford; Paul Schneider steals several scenes as another outlaw; and so on, all the way to Mary-Louise Parker and Zooey Deschanel, whose appearances in very small parts bespeaks the production’s perceptive attention to the story’s active margins as well as its centers of gravity. A special nod also goes to James Carville, the celebrated political consultant, who plays a wheeling-and-dealing governor here; we knew he could mold performances, and now he shows he can carry one off as well.

Some critics have predictably attacked the picture for being mannered and arty, charges I anticipated before I’d finished watching it. All this means is that Dominik’s ingenious blend of narrative realism and daring visual poetry, staking out a cinematic zone about midway between classicism and modernism, is too much for some spectators (including professional ones) to take in. Don’t make their mistake. Expect the unusual, settle into the movie’s unhurried sense of time, and look for character-based epiphanies rather than explosive bursts of violent action. You’ll have one of the most memorable film experiences of recent times.