 |
..Gary
Dretzka
..Noah
Forrest
..Leonard
Klady
..R.J.
Matson
..David
Poland
..Douglas
Pratt
..Ray
Pride
..Michael
Wilmington
The
Assassination of
Jesse James by the
Coward Robert Ford
Directed
by Andrew Dominik
The
Irritation of David Poland by the
Film That Should Have Stayed On
The Shelf For Another Decade So Critics Could Claim It Was A Lost Masterpiece
(More Like Mastur...)
The most pretentious title of the decade is now the most pretentious studio release in a decade!!!
Watch out for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which is about to be the most overly praised critics wet dream you may ever fall asleep during.
I’ll keep it simple, since that is all this movie really deserves.
Andrew Dominik, who made the raw, gritty, irresistible Chopper just seven years ago, got his hands on DVDs of Terrence Malick’s films, Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate, Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid, and a few other nouveau westerns and picked his very favorite parts, took Warner Bros’ $50 million, and the passion of Brad Pitt (which I would never mock in any way, though it as led to some terrible choices), and a cadre of very good actors and made one of the most obnoxiously taste-free stews imagineable.
And I don’t just think this because it is yet another half-ass attempt to do what The Proposition did on a miniscule budget and some really well crafted ideas.
I adore Malick… because I see meaning in every bit of waving wheat in every Malick movie. Malick makes movies about man separating himself from nature, both literal nature and what Malick clearly feels is his own better nature. Brad Pitt in a field looks really pretty.
I adore Altman… because when he reduces cliches of genre filmmaking down to the raw reality of how men treat other men (used in the universal homo sapiens way), he is using that turn with a certain irony, fully aware of when he is making his film and whom for, and the moment says as much about our expectations as it does about his filmmaking.
I adore some of Cimino… because when he indulges in excesses of either image or action, he is delivering an aesthetic that reaches well beyond the visual image and essentially paints his characters into images of classic American iconography and stereotype (when he is good).
I adore Peckinpah... because he understood violence and men of violence and never looked away from the price of violence on the individual or society, literally or figuratively.
Of course, these are simplifications of my full feelings about the works of these directors. But compared to Dominik’s abuse of the privilege, the over-simplification is minor. I would find it easy to write it off as another Aeon Flux situation where a one-time indie director got hold of too much money and too big a star at too big a studio and ended up finger painting with the own excrement on a wall that they never should have been put in front of in the first place. But then the rapturous reviews from some smart people… oy!
Really, as mean as I am being, I feel bad for everyone involved. Pitt is working his ass off to create an elusive, but distinct character. The supporting cast is excellent. The production design by Patricia Norris is first class. And the cinematography by Roger Deakins is stunning… you will likely never see light coming from the inside of every character in a movie’s eyeballs like this again. And for good reason. It looks like the most expensive Abercrombie & Fitch ad in history. It’s beautiful, but its as empty as the heads that house the bodies that A&F so giddily fetishizes. (Obviously, some models are smart... but as defined by those images, the possibility of intelligence is antithetical.)
And I feel terrible for Warner Bros, where some people have drunk the Kool-Aid on this one so deeply that their urine is running bright orange and purple. If you see this film, you will quickly realize that cutting it down to the 100 minute film that should have been greenlit in the first place for half the budget is impossible. The pace is so languorous and the quite small story spread so thinly across the mealy bread of the film that you could hate the film equally at 90 minutes, 100 minutes or 110 minutes. But only at the full and abusive 160 minutes (it seemed longer) could critics be lulled into believing that the film was anything more than a self-indulgent mess.
I even feel bad for Andrew Dominik, who suffers the fate of having all he could have dreamed of and not knowing that he needed to rein himself in even if all around him were breathing heavy at the fertility of it all.
I often see films more than once, especially films I loathe, to figure out whether I missed something. But that was not an issue here, since the film took pains to say everything it had to say over and over and over again. Perhaps the goal was to act like one of those learn-while-you-sleep audio tapes, lulling the viewer into state of brain sleep and implanting the phrase, “a loser who kills a winner, who is really a loser, and remains a loser is the most important story you have ever seen” into your brain on a subconscious level.
Or maybe a simple,
clean, smart idea for a story turned into an agonizingly pretentious mess
with world class cinematography and some good performances. You make the
call… if you dare!
