Had I seen The Assas­si­na­tion of Jesse James by the Cow­ard Robert Ford ear­lier, I might have included it among my Most Dis­ap­point­ing Films of 2007. Cer­tainly not because it’s “bad,” for could I make a bet­ter movie myself? Could I make a movie at all? And who appointed me a critic, any­way? But this blog is about my per­sonal reac­tions to movies, so here goes. Assas­si­na­tion was praised to the high heav­ens by pub­li­ca­tions includ­ing Dork Report favorite Sight & Sound, so I had expected it to be one of the year’s gems. And indeed, the act­ing is excel­lent and the cin­e­matog­ra­phy breath­tak­ing. But I would describe the movie as “nov­el­is­tic,” not nec­es­sar­ily a good thing with cin­ema, as opposed to, you know, novels.

Assas­si­na­tion no doubt inher­ited its notably slow pace (not a prob­lem for me) from its source mate­r­ial, the novel by Ron Hansen. I haven’t read it, but I sus­pect my own chief com­plaint like­wise derives from the book: the omni­scient nar­ra­tion. I’m not one that thinks voiceover nar­ra­tion is a screenwriter’s crutch to be avoided at all costs, but there are two extremes in which it can be mis­used: to redun­dantly expli­cate the action seen on screen or to impart infor­ma­tion bet­ter shown that told. The Assas­si­na­tion of Jesse James does both. I wish I had made a note of an exam­ple or two, but there are numer­ous instances of nar­ra­tion that could sim­ply have been cut for not adding any­thing to what we’re watch­ing onscreen at the moment. But on the oppo­site end of the spec­trum, one of the most sig­nif­i­cant events of the story, Ford’s ulti­mate dis­il­lu­sion­ment with James and deci­sion to betray him to the law, hap­pens off­screen and is offhand­edly recounted by the nar­ra­tor. Ford approach­ing the author­i­ties to become a crim­i­nal infor­mant would have made for a dra­matic scene.

Through amber fields of grain

Although the pair­ing is not quite fair, I am I huge fan of the HBO series Dead­wood and couldn’t help but com­pare the two in my head. Please set aside for a moment the only roughly related set­tings (Dead­wood is set in 1870s South Dakota, and Assas­si­na­tion in 1882 Mis­souri) and bear with me for a moment. Most obvi­ously, actor Gar­ret Dil­lahunt appears in both. Dil­lahunt may have been type­cast as a 19^th Cen­tury sort, but his char­ac­ters could not be more dif­fer­ent. The Fran­cis Wol­cott of Dead­wood is an edu­cated, urbane, and yet dan­ger­ously per­verted early Mas­ter of the Uni­verse, a far cry from the sui­ci­dally igno­rant Ed Miller in Assas­si­na­tion. But where the two diverge, and Dead­wood cer­tainly pre­vails, is the dia­logue. David Milch’s script­ing is the kind of aston­ish­ingly pro­fane poetry that might result when char­ac­ters with Vic­to­rian edu­ca­tions find them­selves liv­ing in the ass-end of the world. I found myself spoiled by my mem­o­ries of the prematurely-cancelled Dead­wood, and wished Assas­si­na­tion had a lit­tle more of its poetry.

But enough grip­ing — time for the praise! Roger Deakin’s cin­e­matog­ra­phy is deli­cious, full of warm oranges and deep unbro­ken fields of black. A notable visual effect used to open new chap­ters in the story is a nar­row field of focus with a blurry halo, sug­gest­ing old daguer­rotypes (sim­i­lar to what I’ve seen recently in The Illu­sion­ist). Dork Report guest critic Snark­bait chris­tened the effect “Ye Old Timey Fil­ter No. 4,” but accord­ing to an inter­view with Deakins in Amer­i­can Cin­e­matog­ra­pher, the fil­ter is his own inven­tion and appro­pri­ately called the Deakinizer.

The James Gang in hap­pier days

There is fine act­ing all around, and two fun cameos from James Carville and Nick Cave (who cowrote the film’s music). Casey Affleck rounds out an excel­lent year in his career after Gone Baby Gone with a great per­for­mance as Robert Ford, obvi­ously not billed above Brad Pitt but arguably the main char­ac­ter. Sam Rock­well (as Charley Ford) is espe­cially great near the end of the film, as his simple-minded char­ac­ter trag­i­cally breaks down. Pitt makes a charm­ing and earthy, yet plainly socio­pathic Jesse James. James’ curse is that he’s always the smartest man in the room, but one need only wit­ness the par­tic­u­larly unhinged laugh Pitt gives him to see how lunatic and crim­i­nal the man actu­ally is.

I lied, one more com­plaint: Mary-Louise Parker & Zooey Deschanel, both fine, name actors, appear in minia­ture roles with min­i­mal dia­logue. Per­haps their char­ac­ters were sim­i­larly minor in the orig­i­nal novel, but they seem under­served in the film. Per­haps the female pres­ence in the actual lives of these his­tor­i­cal fig­ures was not sig­nif­i­cant, but to return to Dead­wood for a moment, Dead­wood repeat­edly proved it is not his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism to include women in a modern-day por­trait of a bygone era.

Offi­cial movie site: jessejamesmovie.warnerbros.com

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