Finally saw The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Not a great movie but parts are worth it. I especially like the portrayal of James himself, a man alternately coarse and troubled -- the coarse parts being more convincing than the troubled parts since Brad Pitt's default expression seems to be one of troubled blankness. But when he's coarse and rude and jovial we get a real glimpse of the anger and sadness there, more deeply than when Pitt goes all puppy-eyes on us. I also liked how very little was spoken that meant what was said, speaking one's mind being a faux pas in this sort of manly universe. But almost nothing was said in the whole movie that was not an outright lie, an elision, a change of the subject, chit-chatty bullshit, etc. (An almost sole exception being Jesse's line about how when the soul peeks over the mountain it will be as loath to reenter the body as you would be to suck up your own puke.) I enjoy when movies show how little meaning corresponds to text, maybe because it seems so difficult from a screenwriter's perspective (I can only imagine how many notes the script must have contained.) Our culture is built on words, always has been, even our visual art needs to have paragraphs of explanation attached to it. It's nice to be reminded how small a part words play in the dance of meaning.
The character of James gradually morphed into your basic american movie tragic-hero: paranoid, moody, self-destructive. But there was something in the character (and in the story itself) that didn't quite lend itself to this pigeonholing, which made that section a little difficult to stomach. And once he's offscreen the movie sort of peters out. But it makes its point, which is the same question of imaginary fathers that McCarthy deals with. (Also notice how Jesse only starts to go south when his older brother, his authority figure, takes off.)
The narration was sub-par and seemed tacked on but what it was trying to do was frame the movie into the right genre: this is a historical essay, told in retrospect, with all the phrases and cadences of a documentary. A short story of a movie.
The visuals are more surreal than documentary though, and I kept noticing how in the framing of the outdoor shots the land seems to dominate the sky, grain and weeds and browns and dull greens pushing out the blue and clouds. It made me realize how much the camera cuts a hole out of reality, a hole where we are. I wouldn't be noticing these things in a movie that demanded I believe in it (cf: Kubrick's "not shooting reality but the photograph of reality"), another reason why this is more of an essay.
