Save This Movie

Of Interest to the Movie-Goer:

I title this entry "Save This Movie" because I'm really afraid that "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" will fall into the dustbin of movie history; perhaps it'll be picked up and replayed by a desultory college student or two, but that's it. I want to say that the film has so much to recommend it that it would be a travesty for it to fade into obscurity. Yes, it sports Fellini-sized self-indulgence, not terribly kosher for a sophomore director. Yes, it unashamedly exhibits time-lapse clouds...at multiple points in the film's 2 hour and 40 minute duration. But this isn't a Malickian fancy, though there is something that conjures that eccentric cousin of American cinema in the juxtaposition of brutality and natural beauty. "Assassination" features one strong (Pitt) and one brilliant (Affleck) performance. As a psychological study it is incredibly sharp and revealing. Its portrayal of the American West is unique and strange. And while it doesn't ultimately develop its main theme--the interaction between myth and reality, or language and its object ("You can hide things in vocabulary," one character says early in the story)--to any sort of satisfactory conclusion, it's a rare sort of movie these days that tries to fit its head around these ideas at all.