Best Western of the 21St Century (thus far)
One of Best Films of 21st Century (thus Far)
“He’s just a man,” the wannabe desperado Robert Ford (Casey Affleck) says of the legendary outlaw Jesse James he’s destined to kill.
But the coward is damn wrong!
Do not be dissuaded by the film’s protracted title: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
From the moment Brad Pitt emerges phantom-like from a cloud of locomotive smoke (a silhouette of menace by the great cinematographer Roger Deakins), it’s clear that this Jesse James is man and myth rolled into one.
Aussie director Andrew Dominik’s moody oater Western, named after both men, becomes an ambivalent eulogy for the fables and myths of the Old West, told through episodes of a vividly lawless 19th-century America.
It illustrating vividly, like no other Western, John Ford’s famous adage in his 1962 Western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” when the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” said by the newspaper editor when questioned by the sheriff Ranse (Jimmy Stewart).
Dominik highlights the dawn of a new celebrity age, lethal in its consequences for both heroes, anti-heroes and their followers,
Brad Pitt, in top (minimalist) form, renders an impressive performance that earned him the Venice Film Fest Best Actor Award.
Casey Affleck is superb as the tragic, craven Bob Ford, whose claim to 15 minutes of infamy (to paraphrase Andy Warhol) rests on one brief incident, using a pistol on the most legendary gunslinger of that era.
Despite rave reviews, the movie was inexplicably a commercial flop. Was it the grim text? the dark, paranoid mood? the reliance on gestures rather than words? the story’s ambiguous nature?
We proudly designate The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford as an honorable panel of our new AMOUR movie club.
