The Assassination of Jesse James etc

Movies
21

Good lord, you Yuma haters are goofballs. Denny, Yuma’s an awesome popcorn flick. I loved it. You have to be a cold-hearted bastard to not get into the spirit of it. That’s right, I said that! Suck it, LK!

The more I think about Assassination of Jesse James, the more I think I picked the wrong favorite movie of 2008 (There Will Be Blood). But I hadn’t seen Assassination in time for my list, and rules are rules…

Casey Affleck’s performance is right up there with Daniel Day-Lewis’ in There Will Be Blood. They’re night and day in terms of tone, but they’re both equally stunning, and they both occupy a crucial central place in their respective movies. But unlike Daniel Day-Lewis almost monastic isolation, Casey Affleck’s performance is informed by the actors he’s working with: his bumbled introduction with Sam Shepard, his inadequacy around Jeremy Renner and Paul Schneider, his fraternity with Sam Rockwell, and his aching devotion to Brad Pitt. It’s a beautiful kaleidoscope performance that comes into perfect focus during the scene at the dinner table in which he’s goaded into talking about his admiration for Jesse James.

It’s almost enough to make me go back and unhate the terrible Casey Affleck stuff I’ve seen before (Lonesome Jim being the chief offender).

As for the portrayal of Jesse James, the suicide angle was great. There was a sense that inside Jesse James was a decent man disillusioned by the rot and murder and incompetence around him, and his will to live slipped away based on wistful philosophical observations rather than a deep-seated depression. Also, Brad Pitt was much better than Rob Lowe. :)

-Tom

“What ever possessed you to go up on the roof in December?”

22

What? We rarely get a peek into Jesse James’ thoughts. Where did you pull that from? The film very much left Jesse James as an enigmatic, but obviously mentally unstable (probably manic depressive) figure.

23

Ahh, “popcorn movie”: the last refuge of the scoundrel. The important thing is that we agree on the actually good movie, here, so I’ll just focus on that.

I saw this and Gone Baby Gone relatively close together, and I’d never seen another Casey Affleck movie that I can recall. Between that and Ben Affleck suddenly being a decent director I can only imagine we’re in for a Hollywood sibling renaissance. I can’t wait.

I still haven’t seen Blood, but I guess I should get to it before it’s out of theaters here.

Also, yeah, what do you mean Tom? I definitely didn’t see your spin on James’ motivations.

24

I disagree that he’s an enigma, Mordrak. On the contrary, I’d say he’s a pretty vivid character. For starters, the third-person omniscient narrator tells us a lot about Jesse James, including how he feels. But he also tells us a lot about himself, though his soliloquies to Charlies Ford on the frozen lake (“Once you see the other side, you’d no more want to return to your own body than spoon up your own puke.”) and to Robert Ford when he gives him the gun (about seeing his mean face from outside his body). There’s his confession about killing Ed Miller, the killing itself, and the way he weeps in front of Dick Liddil after beating the boy in the barn.

One of my favorite moments is at the dinner table after Charlie Ford lies about how he hurt his foot. The way Brad Pitt plays it speaks volumes: Jesse James know he’s being betrayed by people he’s trusted, and he takes a moment to decide how to react. Pitt just stares at the table for a moment and seems to leave his body. Then he looks back up and responds with a lame joke. It’s an awesome moment, and it says a lot about what’s going on in the character’s head.

My assessment might be off about why he’s suicidal, but that’s not for lack of information. The movie has a lot to say about Jesse James as a character.

-Tom

P.S. The soliloquies I mentioned are where I get the sense that his drift into suicide is philosophical rather than emotional. It’s this weird almost Buddhist take on the world and how things turned out. I’d have to watch it again to get too specific.

25

Rats, you called me out on that… Yeah, I wouldn’t let anyone get away with that, either.

-Tom
26

That I understand more, thanks for the clarification. I loved that scene at the dinner table as well.

I think I’ll definitely be buying this one a little later on.

27

Ooh, I just found these on IMDB. From the narrator’s opening:

He also had a condition that was referred to as “granulated eyelids” and it caused him to blink more than usual as if he found creation slightly more than he could accept.

The line to Charlie on the frozen lake:

You ever consider suicide? I’ll tell you one thing. You won’t fight dying once you’ve peeked over to the other side; you’ll no more want to go back to your body than you’d want to spoon up your own puke.

The line to Robert Ford when he gives him the gun:

I go on journeys out of my body and look at my red hands and my mean face and I wonder about that man who’s gone so wrong. I’ve been becoming a problem to myself.

-Tom

28

I agree there’s plenty of information about his actions, but every scene is from anyone but James’ perspective. Even the narrator seems to be talking more about the legend and less the man. When the film ended, I felt like I’d only seen a shadow, which reminds me of that great shot of Jesse James’ silhouette coming out of the mist in the train robbery. One thing is for certain, it is a beautiful film.

P.S. The soliloquies I mentioned are where I get the sense that his drift into suicide is philosophical rather than emotional. It’s this weird almost Buddhist take on the world and how things turned out. I’d have to watch it again to get too specific.
He definitely comes across as contemplative and the Buddhist inference is spot on. Yeah, I’d have to re-watch it as well. Thanks for elaborating.

29

This is actually a good point. Aside from the opening narration, I don’t think Jesse James ever appears alone. You’re always seeing him through someone else’s eyes, as it were.

-Tom
30

My understanding about this movie is that it can only really be appreciated on an iPhone, so I’m waiting till I get one.

31

Thanks. After some more thought, the other element of the film that gave me my impressions is the stereoscope effect. It’s the rounded and blurred edges of the frame that often appear when the narrator is speaking about Jesse or the events. I’m not sure how consistent it is, but it definitely repeats throughout the film, and is used when the narrator describes people paying to see the picture of Jesse James’ body through a stereoscope, next to other wonders of the world, like the pyramids.

You’re right that there’s a lot of subtlety and nuance in the portrayal of James.

32

I would also prefer to have never seen the remake of 3:10 to Yuma. On the other hand, I’m really happy I saw the original 3:10 to Yuma, which I only saw a couple of days before seeing the remake. If I hadn’t seen it, I might have been more forgiving of the remake.

Excellent observation that you’re always seeing James with the benefit of someone else’s perspective - and they’re generally the more animated character in the scene, either because they’re nervous, wary, intimidated, impressionable - they always seem dominated by him in one fashion or another. Also thanks for highlighting those other lines from the narration - they make me appreciate the movie more, and give additional context to the suicide and the “journey” James was on throughout the movie.

I like this movie more and more, in hindsight. I think it was my 2nd favourite movie of 2007, behind only No Country For Old Men, but ahead of There Will Be Blood. It definitely didn’t get as much attention as it deserved – also such a different movie from the director’s prior flick, the also great Chopper.

33

Chopper, that’s right. I’m going to have to go back and watch that again, I wasn’t really able to get into it the first time I saw it (which I had to do in pieces on a tiny screen).

34

Beautifully acted and gorgeously shot–one of my favorites was the shot of the Fords fleeing from the James cabin, and it’s all in deep focus. Visual poetry–they’re fleeing, but there’s no fleeing, that which is behind them isn’t softened or blurred by any distance or speed with it.

What really started to aggravate me, though, was the narration frequently leaping to heavy-handedness. Things like portentously narrating on about how Jesse was acting more erratically, acting merry and making jokes but there was an undercurrent of melancholy blah blah blah–it just struck a wrong note, as if the filmmaking wasn’t confident in the actual showing of that right in the frame, right in the shots and actors. Just unnecessary and weak.

It also brought There Will Be Blood to mind comparatively, because there was a beautifully-shot and acted slow-burn-build film that didn’t lack confidence in its showing-not-telling. No narrator suddenly breaking into a wonderful scene with a, “Sitting in shadow on the beach, Daniel Plainview felt that same shadow chill his heart as he stared at his reunited brother plunging out of sight into the waves…” or a “Daniel Plainview stared musingly at the screaming baby, thoughts and dreams whirling between the scars and ambitions of his mind…”

I’m going to blame test audiences, just as a general rule of thumb.

35

After recently seeing this from netflix, I’m going to have to agree (I think with Tom) that Affleck definitely deserved the Best Actor more than the guy who played Chigurgh in No Country for Old Men.

36

I disagree. The narrator is necessary for the perspective they chose for the film. It’d take a total re-envisioning of the film to remove the narrator. The film is about all these characters around Jesse trying to puzzle the man out. They are on the outside, trying to peer into him. For most of the characters, trying to understand James is a matter of survival. For Robert Ford, it’s coming to terms with the myth he dreamed of and the man he ultimately faced. The audience, like the characters, is also on the “outside.” By framing the film through the narrator and at times literally through the stereoscope, we are looking back trying to puzzle out the man through his legend.

Without the literary narrator, much of that is lost. The film would play more like a traditional bio-pic.

37

And then again, scenes such as Jesse at the table, realizing he’s being lied to, quietly taking stock and thinking what to do about it–no narration, and more powerful for it.

I didn’t have an issue with it being used for perspective, giving setting and time changes, and such things as laying out the aftermath of Robert Ford’s final fate, but narration crosses a line when it starts announcing inner states. The characters orbiting the man trying to puzzle him out, what he knows, how he’ll react; their fear and veneration combined–all that came through just fine purely by the acting chops.

38

Drastic, I suspect a lot of the narration has to do with the director, Andrew Dominik, wanting to capture bits of the novel that can’t be filmed. There Will Be Blood was primarily a screenplay (it’s interesting how little it actually draws from Upton Sinclair), whereas I suspect Assassination owes a lot to the novel (note: technically, I’m just making this up as I haven’t actually read the novel).

Also, the narration in the beginning lays a lot of groundwork combined with Roger Deakin’s cinematography and Brad Pitt’s acting. I would have hated to not have the line about Jesse James blinking because “creation was too much for him to accept”. And I maintain the scene of Jesse James staring at the prairie fire wouldn’t have been the same without all three elements: the narration, the performance, and the cinematography.

As for the other moments when it steps into the movie, I felt it was used sparingly enough. I would agree with you if the movie leaned more heavily on the narration, but Assassination of Jesse James takes time to breathe quietly in so many places, letting the actors and the camera do the work. As a director, I felt Dominik struck a brilliant balance.

But most importantly, how on earth else could you have ended the movie? The closing narration touches on a character’s inner state – which you felt was crossing a line – but it was powerful and vital and absolutely lovely.

How could you want to cut this:

He was ashamed of his persiflage, his boasting, his pretensions of courage and ruthlessness; he was sorry about his cold-bloodedness, his dispassion, his inability to express what he now believed was the case- that he truly regretted killing Jesse, that he missed the man as much as anybody and wished his murder hadn’t been necessary. Even as he circulated his saloon he knew that the smiles disappeared when he passed by. He received so many menacing letters that he could read them without any reaction except curiosity. He kept to his apartment all day, flipping over playing cards, looking at his destiny in every King and Jack.

Edward O’Kelly came up from Bachelor at one P.M. on the 8th. He had no grand scheme. No strategy. No agreement with higher authorities. Nothing but a vague longing for glory, and a generalized wish for revenge against Robert Ford. Edward O’Kelly would be ordered to serve a life sentence in the Colorado Penitentiary for second degree murder. Over seven thousand signatures would eventually be gathered in a petition asking for O’Kelly’s release, and in 1902, Governor James B. Ullman would pardon the man.

There would be no eulogies for Bob, no photographs of his body would be sold in sundries stores, no people would crowd the streets in the rain to see his funeral cortege, no biographies would be written about him, no children named after him, no one would ever pay twenty-five cents to stand in the rooms he grew up in. The shotgun would ignite, and Ella Mae would scream, but Robert Ford would only lay on the floor and look at the ceiling, the light going out of his eyes before he could find the right words.

-Tom
39

And then again, scenes such as Jesse at the table, realizing he’s being lied to, quietly taking stock and thinking what to do about it–no narration, and more powerful for it.

I’m not sure where you’re going with this. It’s not like the film had Dune style voiceovers, the narration generally bridged jumps in time and location. If my choices are “narration that may get a little heavy-handed”(it never bothered me and I have a hair trigger for the slightest bit of condescension) and “awkward exposition” I’ll take the former, please.

Edit:

Edward O’Kelly came up from Bachelor at one P.M. on the 8th. He had no grand scheme. No strategy. No agreement with higher authorities. Nothing but a vague longing for glory, and a generalized wish for revenge against Robert Ford.

There is no way you can have this be spoken dialogue from a character without being silly, but ye Gods I’d pay a high price to be able to write that well.

40

There would be no eulogies for Bob, no photographs of his body would be sold in sundries stores, no people would crowd the streets in the rain to see his funeral cortege, no biographies would be written about him, no children named after him, no one would ever pay twenty-five cents to stand in the rooms he grew up in. The shotgun would ignite, and Ella Mae would scream, but Robert Ford would only lay on the floor and look at the ceiling, the light going out of his eyes before he could find the right words.

Reading this part again, and I can picture the scene in my head and remember the power it has. Man, I’ve gotta watch this movie again.