Left Field Cinema

The Assassination of Jesse James is the second feature from New Zealand film director Andrew Domink, the man who brought us Chopper and Eric Bana. Unlike most predecessors of the Jesse James story this film deals with the final years of the American icon. Movie goers expecting to see a nostalgic tale of his famous robberies and his courageous gang leader qualities are in for a disappointment. This isn’t a slick shoot ‘em up in the mode of Tombstone or 3:10 to Yuma Not that this makes for a bad movie, quite the contrary.

This is a deeper film in terms of character. We see Jesse James as a complex, not just the Robin Hood figure his legend would have us love. We are given very few reasons to love his character. He is portrayed as a calculated unremorseful killer who robbed from the rich and kept the money for himself, he is a staunch supporter of the Confederacy, he does not restrain beating up teenage boys.

But that isn’t to say that his character is completely negative. This is a loyal family man, an intelligent man who cleverly manages to escape the law and control all of those around him who could potentially affect his safety, a man who is in deep mental turmoil. A man who is almost a living legend. And this is where the title of the film, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, is most poignant. James knows he’s going to die or maybe has to die, but it is he who decides when and how. The assassin Robert Ford acted brilliantly by Casey Affleck is James’ weapon of self-destruction. Yet it is James who controls not just his assassination but the aftermath, moulding Ford into the coward and establishing his own legendary status as the public’s hero, although this could be seen as a distraction from his own cowardice to do the job himself. His fluctuating moods throughout the film seem to indicate that James is wresting with a demon inside of him and the only way to kill the demon is to kill the host – himself. But this too would be legend. The film suggests quite clearly that James was just like the rest of us, subject to the same struggles and mental illnesses such as depression.

The pace of the film is measured. It could be compared to a Terrence Malick (Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line) feature with its elegiac mise en scene and colour photography and it’s meditative pace. The small amount of violence that is in the movie is sudden, sharp and unglamorous. The Assassination of Jesse James is a character assassination of Robert Ford, the creation of the coward and it this and the portrayal of Ford’s eventual demise that make the last twenty minutes (which show events post James’ demise) that perfectly ends this great and masterful piece of cinema.

Nathaniel Davis