The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

The entertainment industry's propensity to reinvestigate saintly and criminal cultural (and pop-cultural) icons is substantial. Again and again and again. Superman in high school, the Joker's back, the Legend of the Omega Man. I personally love how Space Ghost from Coast to Coast and The Brak Show interfilmically respond to this tendency using staple Western narrative tropes like “Hamlet” and “Psycho” to playfully expand the sublimely inter-dimensional terrain (we don't have to always focus upon Superman or Batman if we're not going to invent new characters). Andrew Dominik's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford examines this propensity and exposes the formal underpinnings regarding the ethico-historical content of supposed criminals. By engaging in this dialogue, Dominik manages to draw a sharp parallel between Jesse James and Jesus Christ, while also showing how the ethical formal influence of the tragedy of Jesus's life and times can be reformulated politically (with seemingly contradictory content).

It's as if Dominik's stating that the crowd loves an outlaw and the elite love exploiting the crowd.

Within Dominik's film, we are introduced to a gang of crooks lead by the James Brothers (Brad Pitt and Sam Shephard). They are contrasted with the more cowardly Ford Brothers (Robert - Casey Afflek and Charley - Sam Rockwell) who end up killing Jesse. Further, while Jesse is a God-fearing religious man when he's not robbing trains, Robert is a weaselly opportunistic wretch. Throughout, we see Jesse's dementia getting worse and worse and the film subtly suggests that Jesse tricked Robert into shooting him (having grown tired of living like an outlaw, knowing his final years would be drenched in madness) (hence, Jesse isn't shot in the back, he's shot in the back while looking in the mirror). Solid performances all around, played to a haunting, morose score which simultaneously reminds one of Aranofsky's Requiem for a Dream and a made for t.v. historical drama (music being used to ironically deconstruct the seriousness of Dominik's content?). Affleck's performance also juxtaposes the austere and the commercial, at moments poignantly portraying the conflicted, tortured Ford, at others, coming across like an out-of-place, starving hack (is Dominik encouraging this juxtaposition in order to suggest that fluctuation leads to cowardice?).

In the end, Robert Ford is set up like a Judas: the coward who murdered his friend. Jesse James becomes somewhat of a legend, simultaneously revered, feared, and cheered, a heroic outlaw for the people. Ford, having murdered this figure, is outcasted, and his murderer eventually pardoned and released. The people asked Pilate to free Barabbas thereby condemning Jesus. Jesus was condemned and his memory resonates prominently to this day, his betrayer’s name eternally contemptuous. But within the legend we have Pilate (politics) asking the people (ethics) to free either a sinner or a saint (remarkable individuals, regardless of whether they are wicked or just). If the saint dies, his murderer is derided. But, as Dominik relates, if the criminal dies the perfidy of his betrayer results in his derision as well (popular criminals becoming Saintly). Dominik has picked up on the ancient cult of the exception, the cult of the wicked: treachery is still treachery in any state or form, and culture is generally unkind to the treacherous.

In some ways, it's a shame that Dominik took on this project, seeing how his debut Chopper chronicled the contemporary beginnings of a legendary outlaw, thereby tilling the ground from which subsequent subjective interpretations can be planted and objectified (rather than situating himself in an old-fashioned crop whose tradition has been cultivated for over a century). But his presentation of the legend does lend itself to meta-legendary insight, cutting the head off of snakes, shot in the back while looking in the mirror.

The cinematography by Roger Deakins is brilliant as well, but I've grown tired of qualifying films shot in gorgeous mountainous regions as having brilliant cinematography. If you chill in the country for a prolonged period with a photographer's eye, it isn't hard to shoot pristine shot after pristine shot. Afterwards, the beauty of these shots is exaggerated by urbanites who don't get to spend much time in the country and forget that solid cinematography comes from applying an artistic filmically-photographic eye to a seemingly empty panorama, coaxing split-second beauty from a derelict domain, a seemingly hollow yet enlivened reverberation.

Then again, I suppose this is precisely what Deakins was doing when he filmed the fish swimming beneath the ice.