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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Animal Mutha 
"Who would've thunk it?"
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 Posted - 12/04/2007 : 18:54:02
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Ever since seeing 'Chopper' I've been waiting for Dominik's next film, because if it was anything like his debut, it would be worth watching. Seven years is a long wait and I'm sure stylistically it can't have that much in common with 'Chopper', but I am very eager to go and see it. If only for the fact that I will go and see anything with Sam Rockwell in it, I think he's going to be remembered as a true great one day. I even managed to sit through 'Charlie's Angels' thanks to him, he's just so damn cool in that movie. If you haven't seen 'Lawn Dogs' or 'Jerry and Tom', do it... now!  |
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Ali 
"Those aren't pillows."
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Posted - 12/05/2007 : 07:26:40
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Ponderous, pretentious piffle.
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BaftaBaby
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 12/05/2007 : 10:45:13
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My great-grandmother - who died when I was 21 - was 19 when the notorious Jesse James was shot in the back by the young man who'd wormed his way into the outlaw's life. Whether the news reached her Ukranian shtetl I cannot say, but it sparked a legend that lives in song and dime novels and PhD theses and now in writer/director Andrew Dominik's epic based on Ron Hansen's novel. I mention this because of chronological continuity - one hundred and thirty-odd years is not so very long ago.
Just because the events of the story take place in America's West, this is no genre western. Shot in Canada, Dominik's film geography takes in the border territories of Kansas, Tennessee and Missouri during a post-war era that reflects the erratic healing of the conflict that split families, friends, hearts and minds.
Minds is the operative word. The film is contemplative, a dual character study, and to further emphasize the distance between people and ideas, some of the story is narrated in the style of the novel. It may be that choice, brave though it is, is also the seed of what's wrong with a film that in so many ways is so very right.
Before we get to the praise, I must admit I didn't read the book, so I don't know whether the myth of Jesse James as a charming Robin Hood figure was tempered by explorations of his well-documented irrational brutality or of his fervant pre-war Confederate sympathies that ran to slave-owning and Ku Klux Klan affliations.
The uncontrolled violence is shown in the film, and there are a few references to the outlaw's motives and political sympathies, but there's not a whisper of the racial matter. I can't for the life of me figure out why not. Surely in a film whose 2� hour length echoes the endless and sparsely populated vistas, there might have been room for even a hint of it. The country was still recovering from a war ostensibly fought about slavery - though of course it was actually about economics. Freed slaves were starting to integrate into society. Yet the film is as white as the blizzard on the prairie.
Jesse's older brother Frank, played with characteristic cold authority by Sam Shepard, who'd fought with the Confederacy, was even more fervant a racial bigot than Jesse, and there's evidence to suggest he was actually involved in the administration of the Knights of the Golden Circle since his house in Tennessee was also its Supreme Headquarters.
Dominik's film, though, leads you to believe these brothers and their cousins, cronies and acolytes were 'just' robbers and murderers, though some could quote poetry and others could put two and two together with the best of mathematicians and strategists.
To its credit the film draws unfailing connections between the privilege of politics as its reward for giving the people the illusion of keeping control, while delegating much of their work way out in the boondocks to known outlaws and miscreants. Well, some things never change, eh.
And it's this genius for political manipulation that gives Robert Ford and his traitorous companion Dick Liddil the courage and encouragement to corner Jesse James and kill him. Both Casey Affleck and Paul Schneider turn in beautifully judged performances, the latter of a clearly intelligent man continually fighting with the morality of his dangerous choices. As Ford, Affleck convincingly drops twelve years to portray a young man overwhelmingly obsessed with his hero James.
It's really his journey from worshipper, honoured to breathe the same air as the James Gang, to what he perceives as an undeserved rejection of his selfless adoration that shapes the story. Both he and Dominik really understand that in deifying his hero, almost in the way a lover does to the object of affection, he's fabricating threads of identification that will bolster his own self-worth. And so, when the scenario in his head is countermanded by the unpredictability of the man with feet of clay, he takes it as a personal betrayal so enormous that he's consumed by obsessive vengeance. And, in the film's substantial coda, we learn that for decades after James's death Ford could never understand what went wrong, and, most of all, why the rest of world didn't regard him as a hero, while the James legend grew and grew.
What elevates the film, and what will undoubtedly frustrate those expecting a wham-ban-thank-you-mam approach, is the melding of form and content. In that arena, Brad Pitt yet again chisels out a portrait of real dimension. Without having to tread the same surreal territory of madness in 12 Monkeys, he not only exposes James's mental imbalance, but couples that with a wonderful exploration of someone who's confident he's smarter than those around him and yet is not quite as clever as he thinks he is. And, in moments of a better balance such as being a loving dad, a fearful yet respectful brother, he also reveals that had other choices been made, this might have been a life of joy and peace.
Dominik, not always successfully, bravely attempts to indoctrinate you in the entirely different pace of life while allowing you to share in the range and commonality of human emotion that binds us beyond borders and time. It's an appropriate choice because the story here isn't about one man shooting another -- as the irony of the title suggests -- but rather about what any of us feels compelled to do to justify who we are. In such matters of perception and self-deception, and given the difficulties of transmuting a literary form to the screen, Dominik has met the matter more than halfway. It will be very interesting to chart his development.
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Edited by - BaftaBaby on 12/05/2007 10:50:32 |
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Demisemicenturian 
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 12/05/2007 : 11:13:14
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| Far too long. There's a bad guy who has managed to market himself as a folk hero. He's going to kill someone, so that person kills him instead. That's it. |
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randall
"I like to watch."
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Posted - 06/01/2008 : 23:14:03
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Couldn't disagree more with those who found it too long; the same goes/went for 2001, for I heard the same criticisms in 1968 on that one as I do for this one now. It must be a matter of taste.
I couldn't look away. Pitt was marvelous, and Casey Affleck found the guts to play weak; maybe it's because he doesn't yet have a big-shot star career to protect. The cornpone dialogue was fascinating. My one irritant was the "attenuated" cinematography on the morning of the assassination. Folks, WE GET IT. Can it be that Roger Deakins just shoots his heart out, and then some wiseass plays around with an Avid afterward?
But that's a minor quibble. I loved it. |
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MisterBadIdea 
"PLZ GET MILK, KTHXBYE"
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Posted - 06/02/2008 : 02:52:14
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| Brilliant movie. Don't have much more to say about it, but I thought it was one of the best of the year. |
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Demisemicenturian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 06/02/2008 : 11:33:54
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quote:
Originally posted by Randall
Couldn't disagree more with those who found it too long; the same goes/went for 2001, for I heard the same criticisms in 1968 on that one as I do for this one now. It must be a matter of taste.
Well, it's not a matter of taste about film length in general: I didn't find 2001 too long although in all honesty it is a little over-rated. It's thus just a matter of taste about this film, which can be taken as read with any film since obviously the film's length is preferred by its makers, for example. |
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demonic
"Cinemaniac"
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Posted - 06/02/2008 : 21:16:26
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| I loved this movie as well - I was totally gripped throughout because the acting from everyone in it was soooo good. I think it completed a great triangle of brilliantly made American-set films with "No Country for Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood". All three define 2007 for me. |
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Demisemicenturian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 06/03/2008 : 23:43:56
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| Well, we're agreed that it is in the same league as There Will Be Blood. |
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Montgomery
"F**k!"
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Posted - 06/11/2008 : 15:15:39
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quote:
Originally posted by Salopian
Well, we're agreed that it is in the same league as There Will Be Blood.
Definitely! They were both terrific!
EM :) |
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Demisemicenturian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 06/11/2008 : 16:10:24
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Did they both send you to sleep and you had a lovely dream both times?  |
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demonic
"Cinemaniac"
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Posted - 06/11/2008 : 20:41:22
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| Out of interest Sal what were your top three of 2007? |
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Demisemicenturian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 06/12/2008 : 03:47:03
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| Here were my top three by mid-January 2008. I.M.D.B.-2007 films that I've since seen and may slot in are 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days, The Edge of Heaven, Juno (almost certainly), Lars and the Real Girl, No Country for Old Men and Persepolis (very likely). |
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The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Rob
