The Peregrin Pages

“The English have Shakespeare, the French have Moliere, the Russians have Chekhov. The Western is ours.”  (Robert Duvall)

I love westerns.  I grew up on great western films starring  John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Jimmy Stewart, and I still read stacks of western novels every year.  I have even tossed around a few ideas for my own western novels and films and some day by golly, I’m actually going to write one.  So when I read Carmen Andres’ excellent review of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford  over at In the Open Space I knew I had to bring it up a few notches on my que.  I was not disappointed.

Brad Pitt convincingly plays the middle-aged outlaw Jesse James, while Casey Affleck gives an equally impressive–albeit creepy–performance of James’ assassin, “the dirty little coward” Robert Ford.

As I watched the film, one verse of Scripture kept coming to mind over and over again.  It was the enigmatic last verse of 1 John; “Dear children, keep yourselves from idols”  (5:21, NIV).  I believe it was coming to the forefront of my awareness because in many ways, this film is a lesson in the destructiveness of idol worship.

Sine he was a boy, Robert Ford had almost literally worshipped the great outlaw Jesse James and dreamed daily of one day joining his gang and becoming James’ closest friend.  In fact his desire was to be like James himself, or at least like the Jesse James he had read about in his dime store novels.  Affleck does an excellent job in his performance of Ford as a slimy, frightening man whom you despise for weakness one moment and take pity on the next.

Brad Pitt’s Jesse James reveals a man who is only in his mid-thirties and yet has been aged by a life of sin.  He is tired, filled with fear and self-loathing, and finds himself both a folk hero who is beloved by the whole contry, and utterly alone at the same time.  While Ford has known only the legend of James, he finds the real man quite different.  He is no American Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.  He is a cold-blooded killer who shoots his friends in the back because he merely suspects them of betrayal.

Because of his spiritual and mental torment, James is incapable of trust and so he begins to reject Ford just as he has rejected almost everyone else in his life aside from his wife and children.  It is at that point that Ford’s idolatry morphs into contempt and  hatred.  It seemed to me that Ford gets it into his mind that if he cannot be like James by being his friend, then he must be like him by becoming his killer.

After his death, James’ fame would become virulent and spread through the minds and hearts of the masses while Ford would become infamous, and be forever known as “that dirty little coward Robert Ford.”  As Ford himself explains in one scene; he thought that by killing James, people would applaud, but applause is not what he received.

The film is worth seeing for many reasons.  First, it is complex and filled with strong characters and universal themes like love, hatred, betrayal, murder, friendship, lust for power and greed.  In short, all the things that prove Duvall’s point:  The western is America’s Shakespeare.

Secondly, the film was filled with strong performances at every turn, not only Affleck’s and Pitt’s.  In fact Sam Rockwell gives an excellent performance as Robert Ford’s older brother Charley.  In my personal opinion, Rockwell is a shockingly underrated actor and certainly deserves some respect for his work in this movie.

If you like westerns this is not a typical one, but it is certainly worth watching.  If you don’t like westerns, then you can still enjoy this film as well because it contains a universal touch capable of reaching most audiences.  There is no way I can even begin to describe all of the delightful complexities of this work of art.  The bottom line is that this is an excellent film, and if you haven’t seen it yet, go rent it today.

I give The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford an A+.