Last month’s Academy Awards ceremony passed with little drama and few surprises. Despite the last 12 months having yielded an unusual number of high-quality films the OSCARS ceremony received its lowest ratings since 1974. Why should this be? Aside from the fact that most of the awards are presented in the early hours of the moring in the UK, most people seem to be suggesting the the general public didn’t particularly connect with the films up for the main awards. So, either the Academy are clueless, film executives have lost touch with their market or people don’t know a good film when they see one (or rather, don’t). Although there may be some truth in all of these I am personally convinced that it is the latter reason which is most to blame.

Rather than starting to review generic rubbish, over the coming weeks I will write about some of my favourite films of the last year which, perhaps, have not received the acclaim they deserve.

I always imagined that the lives of the American outlaws of the 19^th Century must have been filled with impetuous acts of daring and death-defying escapes with barely time to catch their breath between one shootout and the next robbery. I had subconsciously assumed that the entirety of the time between their first criminal act and their inevitably premature death had played out like an extended version of Bonnie and Clyde, with that same sense of youthful recklessness. Commonly, films about gunfighters and mercenaries, even great ones such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid or Sergio Leone’s ‘Spaghetti Westerns’, have largely supported such a notion. In this sense, as in several others, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (TAJJCRF) breaks the mould of how the stories of such men should be related.

With such a cumbersome title (almost to the point of being pretentious) few can have expected the film to be a massive box office success. Neither is the film intended to be a fast-paced, crowd-pleasing thriller that happened to be set in a particular time and place. There are few tense stand-offs (at least where guns are involved) and few acts of remarkable skill or bravery. Furthermore, strangely for a film about perhaps the most famous bandit of all time, but TAJJCRF features only one actual robbery.

It is clear from the film’s outset that the goal of its director, Andrew Dominik, is to convey a more accurate idea of what life was like for men such as Jesse James. In many ways, TAJJCRF resembles the German film, Der Untergang, about Adolf Hitler’s final days in his bunker. The directors of each film clearly shared a belief that the true natures of their respective protagonists could be best captured not in the heat of battle or the glory of triumph but in the uneasy stillness as things gradually unravelled around them. It is in exactly such a period in which the duration of TAJJCRF takes place.

Perhaps the first thing that struck me first about this film was its excellent cinematography. Roger Deakins, long the preferred cinematographer of the Coen Brothers amongst others, has recently established himself at the very top of his field. This year he received two of the four Academy Award nominations for cinematography – for No Country for Old Men as well as TAJJCRF. In the latter of these two very differently shot films, perhaps the most striking feature of his work was his exceptional use of framing. As obscure as such a feature may seem, as well as increasing the film’s aesthetic appeal, framing can add context and therefore meaning to what might otherwise be a fairly ordinary scene.

The story is largely told through the eyes of Robert Ford, a young aspiring gunslinger who idolises James and eventually succeeds in befriending him. In his role as the naïve, socially awkward Ford, Casey Affleck excels. His performance displays a depth and attention to detail too seldom seen. From his vacant yet vaguely malignant grin in the early scenes (reminiscent of Private Pyle in Full Metal Jacket) through to his empty gaze of resignation towards the end, through Affleck we watch Ford’s transformation from an ambitious nobody to a dejected somebody.

The rest of the cast were good, but none of them, including Brad Pitt as Jesse James, come close to matching Affleck’s performance. It is here where the film’s main problem lies. As convincing as he is, it is difficult not to feel that Pitt’s portrayal of James represents something of a missed opportunity. Were James a more interesting character, the film (the first hour in particular) may not have seemed quite so long. As it stands, for those unable to appreciate the film’s more subtle qualities the first half may be too slow to persuade them to continue to give it their full attention. That is a great shame, because for those willing to dedicate the level of concentration the film requires and deserves, TAJJCRF is an unforgettable experience. It’s a story not about heroes and villains but about men, neither wholly good nor wholly bad, struggling for respect, recognition and ultimately survival, in a hostile and unforgiving environment. 

Rating: 8.6/10