“He is a human being” says Robert Ford (Casey Affleck) about the outlaw and cold blooded killer Jesse James (Brad Pitt). The context and the meaning he says carry different terms of inspection into this outlaw who became a legendary figure after his death. And in “The Assassination….” we see the world in which the men live by fear of this man and things remained as a mystical legend comes into light or at least a close proximity we can see on the state of mind of these people.The title tells us how it is going to study these characters and arrive at that juncture to reveal what both of them have become. One Bob Ford has been fantasizing and obsessing over the tales of this ruthless and violent outlaw who murdered and plundered the states of Missouri and Kansas. But to see these people we need to know the world they were surrounded by and out here we see their gangs and compadres. There is Jesse’s elder brother Frank James (Sam Shepard), Dick Liddil (Paul Schneider), Wood Hite (Jeremy Renner), Ed Miller (Garret Dillahunt) and the brother of Bob Ford, Charley Ford (Sam Rockwell). The iconic state of terror Jesse James created is not felt by the presence of Brad Pitt but through the other characters showing the sense of fear when he is around. It is always the grapevine through which the manifestation of petrified feeling is generated.
The photography of Roger Deakins is a monumental character. We would see the clouds and skies in a different freshness of its pigments, there would be dried grass fields having golden aura and we would think that there is something odd about it. We would be haunted that so much of those fields and skies have been painted in many films having the same beauty but Deakins has the shade of colour mixture which should truly be recognized in the Academy Awards. The costumes and how Pitt wears them has the term defined as fit to perfection. They stand in the shadows of the trees and the other men, illuminated by the lights from lanterns, train lights and bright sunshine. Such is the presence that it has the antiquity in the air which travels across the screen. The same tone of course have we seen in the “The Illusionist” and the same cinematographer in “Jarhead” and “The Village” (which I have seen in parts). Yet there is a touch above significance in that been aiding the film in unknown measures with an ample support from the melancholic dark score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis.
It seems to keep our judgments away at the corner. If Robert Ford will be named coward for rest of his life, Jesse James honestly need to share it as well. Both the men did the things against the voice inside them telling them not to do. Jesse James practiced it to avoid until he slowly realized the value of life he took. Pitt gives the depressed and deteriorating James who goes through the mid life crisis. He begins to address himself in third person now and then. We realize he is regretting the faces he put down and the blood filled in his cupped hands. His practicing the ignorance faded away and as the first line of this review reads, he is a human being but with lot of problems in his head. If he is so messed up, here comes Bob (a) Robert Ford who meets his child hood hero, of course he still is a kid. Casey Affleck promptly nominated for Academy Award - Best Supporting Actor for 2007, gives a tough performance. Even his angry voice is childish enough to be regarded as the kid for all his life. He gives a man who sees the real hero or his ambition been blown in little fire drill encounters with the man himself. This transformation is a battle inside him and the strange relationship he has garnered with his hero is one another war to face.
We are constantly in fear as that of everybody when James is around. The dialogues are witty and profound. The beings they have become and how they have brushed with death so much that they begin to accept it or even want it is the purpose of this film. Sam Rockwell and Paul Schneider gives their part of support that they are the other men who admire and fear Jesse James but never want to be him either. The film works on various instances towards body language and eye contacts than the usage of short dialogues. We decipher those like them and understand.
The film concludes on how much of people regarded violence as an outpouring through Jesse James and how many in their own ways judged both these men. While both deserve the scrutiny of justice to be laid upon them, Ford before getting his life done earned a lot of money and humiliation. Such is the film’s absence of any female character (even though there is Jesse’s wife Zee played by Mary-Louise Parker but she rarely speaks), that when the first person to hear Ford’s confiding statements is so comforting.
Director Andrew Domnik works on these two personalities who were in many ways completely opposite still had this tie to play a rope-a-dope among them. The result is the heart filled with betrayal, depression and hate on themselves. When the title comes as the scene we have completely in terms with James and how Ford stands on a situation with no options he drew himself in. It is rather unfortunate that only one had to suffer the entire world’s cursing.
1 comment:
Great work.
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