MALLINation

Like it’s title, The Assasination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford can feel like too much on the plate, let alone the movie theater marquee. Truth be told, on my first attempt to watch it the sonorous narration, beautiful photography and leisurely pacing conspired to lull me into a sound sleep. Not a good omen.

Fortified by some strong coffee however and in the right frame of mind director Andrew Dominik proves to have a bracing tale to tell indeed, if a long-winded one. The aforementioned narration is a bit of crutch, papering over some storytelling deficiencies in some places and telling us things we can intuit by watching in others but this is a forgivable flaw in a film that is capable of casting a powerful spell, one that works as both a stimulant and a narcotic depending on mood.

In essence it’s a movie about pairs, beginning with the brothers James played superbly by Brad Pitt as Jesse and Sam Shepherd as Frank. They are twinned with the Fords, good-time Charley played to squinty perfection by the always-watchable Sam Rockwell, and Robert, a singularly unlikable pasty faced fellow in a justly Oscar nominated performance by Casey Affleck.

What the Academy missed though in falling all over Benjamin Button is Brad Pitt’s best performance to date. Combining everything Pitt has learned (he’s surely grown into a fine actor rather than arriving fully formed), his Jesse James is by turns terrifying, funny, soulful, pitiable, and devious. His charisma is undeniable but then so is his unpredictability. Every other character save brother Frank is a little off-step when Pitt enters a room, constantly weighing what his reaction to what they do or say may be. It’s Pitt’s cleverness to play his character as fully aware of this affect, sometimes exploiting it and other times pretending ignorance.

Pitt in essence plays the isolated star, someone who can expect to hear a distorted version of the truth from everyone he meets. Affleck is the starfucker – wanting to both be Jesse James and to annihilate him.

Affleck bravely makes his character a mealy mouthed weasel, a creepy little sycophant and yes, a coward. He and Jesse are ultimately paired just as the sets of  brothers were, fated as fan and object of fandom to live and indeed die together. It’s a disturbing and real symbiosis that finds echoes in time with Mark David Chapman and John Lennon, John Hinckley and Jodie Foster, and the countless celebrity obsessives who never quite get to the dangerous stage but come awfully close.

The supporting performances are uniformly excellent from testy Jeremy Renner, always keeping an eye on randy ladies man Paul Schneider as the comically named Dick Liddel. The women, including the very talented pair of Mary-Louise Parker as Mrs. James and Zooey Deschanel are given short shrift and some of the stunt casting (James Carville as the Governor and Nick Cave as a wandering troubadour) threatens to distract.

The whole is set off by Roger Deakins’ masterful cinematography, with burnt umbers, ashy whites, sepia tones and mud so richly brown you can almost smell the horse dung mixed in. It’s a breathtaking film to look at, reminiscent of Terence Malick’s great 70s classics like Days of Heaven in the love of sheer poetic imagery – a little girls empty shoe in the grass for instance. The totality of the visuals conspire to feel totally authentic – so this is what it was like to live in these times.

Thankfully these reveries are the connective tissues between some fantastic scenes – a nighttime train robbery, a sequence of menacing playacting between Jesse James and Ford that find’s Pitt enjoying the taste of the words in his mouth like he’s savoring a fine whiskey, Ford re-enacting the assassination on stage for hundreds of performances with his brother made up and wooden as James’ stand-in (just as happened in real-life.)

Like many a rich meal it can be hard to finish Jesse James without falling asleep at the table, overwhelmed by the repast. In this case, it’s worth showing up hungry.