The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Directed by Andrew Dominik (2007)
Yes, it may be nearly two years old, but good things come, etc. I’ve been waiting for the right time to watch this movie for about a year, and on Saturday night I decided it’d never come so I better just get on with it.
I think ‘breathtaking’ would undersell Andrew Dominik’s achievement with this film, it’s an almost surreal and existential journey through the psyche’s of two troubled and hopelessly intertwined men, destined to be the undoing of each other.
Pitt and Affleck are both superb as James and Ford, Affleck in particular captures a complex mixture of adolescent adoration, ambition and spite that comes together to produce a powerful and haunting characterisation of Ford. It’s a really terrific and surprising performance. Less surprising is the ever-reliable Roger Deakins’ cinematography, which provides an utterly mesmerising thread holding together the stories of the two outlaws as they drift throughout Missouri.
It’s a truly magical tale, almost a fable or fairy story, that sucks you in and doesn’t let go until the credits roll.
