Why The Assas­si­na­tion of Jesse James is a mas­ter­ful mod­ern western

In the final act of Andrew Dominik’s retelling of the infa­mous Amer­i­can out­law and the man who took his life, Jesse James (Brad Pitt) looks out over the lone­ly prairie beyond his front porch with his killer sit­ting by his side. ​“I often go on journey’s out of my body,” he con­fess­es to Robert Ford (Casey Affleck), ​“and I won­der about that man that’s gone so wrong.” It’s inti­mate moments like these, where the pair con­fide in each oth­er like long-lost lovers, seek­ing a com­pan­ion­ship they know will nev­er come, that make The Assas­si­na­tion of Jesse James by the Cow­ard Robert Ford the great con­tem­po­rary west­ern that it is.

Jesse James is a fig­ure of fevered sto­ry­telling, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly real and a prod­uct of a young nation hell-bent on craft­ing a fic­tion for itself. The film’s nar­ra­tor tells us ear­ly on how Jesse has a con­di­tion known as ​‘gran­u­lat­ed eye­lids’ that ​“caus­es him to blink more than usu­al, as if he found cre­ation more than he could accept.” Yet when­ev­er we see Jesse star­ing pen­sive­ly, per­haps con­tem­plat­ing a life of crime and vio­lence, he remains unblink­ing. These sub­tle touch­es not only demon­strate Dominik’s nuanced han­dling of a man defined more by dime-store paper­backs than his­tor­i­cal records, they also show the human com­plex­i­ty at work in the film.

Brad Pitt’s per­for­mance speaks of a time­less folk icon dis­pos­sessed of a sense of place, see­ing his reflec­tion in frozen rivers and the dirt­ied win­dows of held-up stage­coach­es rather than a mir­ror in a fam­i­ly home. He is con­sumed by para­noia and self-aware­ness, and it ulti­mate­ly this – not the pis­tol that he pur­chased as a gift for Ford – that proves to be his undo­ing. Yet arguably it’s Casey Affleck as the ador­ing, obses­sive and pathet­ic Judas fig­ure who earns The Assas­si­na­tion of Jesse James its sta­tus as a mod­ern classic.

Ford was raised on tall tales of Jesse and his gang, col­lect­ing any­thing and every­thing he could find writ­ten about him in a shoe­box under his bed. All of Ford is con­tained with­in that box, detail­ing every life and love he longs to pos­sess – it is his entire uni­verse in micro­cosm. Affleck’s por­tray­al of this com­plex and emo­tion­al­ly unsta­ble char­ac­ter is dev­as­tat­ing­ly human, from the way he looks at Jesse with a slight smile and a faint long­ing in his eyes to the way he shakes and cries with grief moments before tak­ing his place in history.

At the heart of Dominik’s film is a twist­ed sto­ry of love which high­lights the two title char­ac­ters’ appar­ent need to con­struct a twist­ed lega­cy for them­selves. Ford des­per­ate­ly wants to be accept­ed by James but secret­ly yearns for some­thing more (“Can’t fig­ure it out: do you want to be like me or do you want to be me?”), while James cul­ti­vates his chance at mar­tyr­dom by Ford’s hands.

Beyond the act­ing this film’s supreme crafts­man­ship is equal­ly as evoca­tive and under­stat­ed. Roger Deakins’ cin­e­matog­ra­phy makes use of colour aber­ra­tion around the edges of his frames, imi­tat­ing vin­tage pho­tographs from the era. His palette is sepia-tinged, aged like the lith­o­graphs that immor­talised Jesse’s body, depict­ing a grim world where life is fleet­ing. Shots of emp­ty rooms, vacant hall­ways, chairs sat idly by win­dows, all expose a life unset­tled in the great cra­dle of civil­i­sa­tion that was the Old West. Deakins active­ly pays homage to silent era films with sev­er­al key shots, notably in the scene in which James crests the hori­zon, framed by the win­dow of a lone­ly shack – a clear nod to The Night of the Hunter. For he is always there, the sen­tinel watch­ing the liv­ing and the dead. In Dominik’s near-bib­li­cal char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion, James is the last ene­my that shall be destroyed.

Cou­pled with Deakins’ som­bre, melan­cholic evo­ca­tion of this sto­ried set­ting is Nick Cave and War­ren Ellis’s score, a beau­ti­ful blend of ele­giac strings and piano bal­lads that mourn the deaths of those onscreen long before their pass­ing. ​‘Song for Bob’, the orches­tral hymn that plays dur­ing the film’s final moments, is the aur­al funer­al for Robert Ford that we will nev­er see. Dominik’s sec­ond fea­ture is a telegram back to a time mired in what was and what might have been. In the moments before his own demise, Ford states of his deeds, ​“Do you know what I expect­ed? Applause.” He died uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly and full of regret, hav­ing lost the one per­son who ever gave him rea­son to live. There was to be no ova­tion for Ford, but Dominik’s mas­ter­ful retelling of this trag­ic sto­ry deserves just that.