THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD

(Andrew Dominik, 2007) 

Can this beautiful piece of poetry really be only Andrew Dominik's second film? It's made with such confidence, such assurance, as to appear the work of some old master, returning to the Western one last time. But then, Dominik's debut, Chopper, was nothing if not assured. And there are other similarities between the two films - both studies of fame and its effect, both centred on complex, disturbed men all too aware of their own myths. Here Dominik recalls the great revisionist Westerns of the 20 year period from the late 60s through the early 80s - the likes of Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, McCabe & Mrs Miller, Heavens Gate and Walter Hill's superb take on the Jesse James legend, The Long Riders. His film has the solemnity and seriousness common to those films, the relaxed yet deliberate pacing, the slightly askew characterisation. It is also great enough to stand in their company without suffering by comparison. Yet it also seemed greatly informed by the work of Terrence Malick in its patience and attention to the natural world, in its subtly persuasive focus on psychology.
Based closely on Ron Hansen's fantastic novel - and taking its narration and much of its dialogue verbatim from the book - and exquisitely photographed by Roger Deakins, Dominik has still somehow managed to make a Western with something original to say. For this is at heart the story of an obsessive fan, with more in common with todays world of stalkers and media saturation than the genre iconography may at first suggest. Perhaps the most incisive passages occur after the titular event has passed and we are shown the fate of Bob Ford, as famous in his time as Jesse James ever was, and struggling to deal with it, just as Jesse did. The still-life montages of landscapes and empty rooms, and the daguerrotype-style shots of Jesse in town and nature provide visual poetry to match the lyricism of Hansen's narration, and Pitt and Affleck both do career-best work, the latter in particular an absolute revelation. The delicate score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis and the fine cast of young actors as Jesse's ragtag last gang (Sam Rockwell, Jeremy Renner, Garett Dillahunt, David Schneider) only make it all more expertly calibrated.
The films most interesting quality is its ambiguity - about its characters, most particularly. Pitt's Jesse is self-loathing, unpredictable, paranoid and lucidly aware of the narrowing odds he is facing; nursing a death wish, yet also charming, charismatic and attractive. He chooses Ford to be his killer, grooms him, and in so doing ensures that Ford is the one who has his character assassinated. The event makes Ford famous, yes, but also destroys his life. Ford gains our sympathy despite his creepiness, the ability he has to set people's teeth on edge merely by talking. This ambivalence in the authorial view of the central figures spreads through the narrative until the entire film is hung with it and the certainty of the title seems possibly ironic. The odd, fractured love story at the heart of this film gives it a black little heart which is beautifully and surgically exposed over the course of the precise, superbly textured narrative.
 As slow as molasses, maybe, but in this sort of Western, thats a good thing, and Dominick adds his name to the roll-call of directors who have made great Jesse James films alongside the likes of Nicholas Ray, Sam Fuller, Phil Kauffman and Walter Hill.

KILLING THEM SOFTLY

(Andrew Dominik, 2012) If the last couple of decades have brought about a proliferation of dramas and black comedies all set within the lower to middle management ranks of the mob - everything from Goodfellas and The Sopranos to Analyze This - then George V Higgins can be considered very much ahead of his time. He was writing novels like this from 1970 onwards, and Peter Yates' terrific adaptation of The Friends of Eddie Coyle captures the world of those books with grit and precision both. Andrew Dominik's film adapts Higgins' book Cogans Trade, and aside from needlessly changing the title, alters little. The structure, characters and plot are generally identical, and much of the - quite brilliant - dialogue comes from Higgins verbatim. What is different is the setting. Higgins book was set in the grim mid-70s, but Dominick sets his film in 2008, the election year in which Barack Obama and John McCain battled to become US President while the American Economy virtually collapsed. He underlines this - a touch heavy-handedly - with recurrent cutaways to politicians discussing the economy on tv, and portions of scenes are soundtracked to similar speeches. This works mainly because Higgins was so interested in the workings of crime as a business. Here, Richard Jenkins is a harassed corporate stooge and middleman, needing committee approval to release funds, insisting that out of town hit men travel in economy. Everybody is on the make, everybody is out for himself, everybody is desperate to make money, and in a final scene (not quite in the book), Brad Pitt's Jackie Cogan, a fixer-cum-assassin, makes that clear. This films last line is "Pay me my money". The story is told in tangents and filled with extended riffs and monologues by newly introduced characters, but the central plot focuses on two inept, ragged young ex-cons (Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn, both outstanding) who hold up a mob card game, and the fallout from this act. The mobster who runs the game, Markie (Ray Liotta) has to pay for past indiscretions, the two young cons have to pay, and their backer has to pay. So Cogan is brought in and he in turn brings in New York Jimmy (James Gandolfini, essaying another fine portrait of decaying masculinity) and Kenny (Slaine), while throughout cons and hitmen swap anecdotes about jail time sodomy, dogshit, prostitutes, and preferred murder methodology. Eventually, however, the violence must begin. And you just know that in the universe created by Higgins and Dominik, that violence will be coruscating. All of this might sound quite Tarantino-esque, and indeed it might be if not for the fact that Higgins influenced Tarantino but retains an essential, unique quality to his storytelling ably imitated here, and for Dominik's distinctively muscular sense of cinema. Here is a Director with a Capital D, composing scenes with dazzling assurance, from the opening sound-clash walk through rubbish in the wind to the heroin high scored (familiarly but satisfyingly) by the Velvet Underground to the bravura scenes of shocking violence. This world also sets itself apart from those of Tarantino's work by its grit; Dominik textures it so that it feels like the world we live in, rain-slicked and shabby as it is, its junkies looking like they stink, its cars and clothes and beer bottles all quotidian and weighted. Pitt has rarely been better (though he chews on his lips as usual), age giving him a bearing and depth his youthful beauty never allowed, and his scenes with a mordant, droll Jenkins are a delight. All this in a film with no real hero, no fixed character to root for; which may be Dominik's point; in a world as torn by economic trauma as todays, there is no space for honour, loyalty, no room for anybody to be a good guy. Instead there is only the struggle for money, the battle for survival, which gives the violence in Killing Them Sofly so much sting. Cogan says it in his slightly didactic last speech: "In America, you're on your own." Dominik is a major filmmaker, and his ambition is to be applauded, even if it only partially comes off in this instance. Still, Killing Them Softly is big, bold, beautiful American filmmaking with wit and flash, that would not have looked out of place in the 1970s, and that is very high praise indeed.