Dan's Papers - October 5, 2007 - Guy de Fraumeni's Hollywod In The Hamptons

They went that a-way! You say those tough galoots wearin' big hats and riding on high, frothy horses rode away off into the sunset? Yes, the Western, as we knew and loved 'em, may have seemingly faded, along with the vanishing Indian, into the nostalgic past but, have no regrets they're a-galloping back and with vengeance. Recently, 3:10 to Yuma was greeted well by critics and returns at the box office were not a measly sack of crude oats. A surprise, as the important 14-year-old male audience considered horses too slow. They just cannot match the terrific action movie must of speeds reached by car chases and Star Wars space shoot-outs. The same gunfights shot in a corral and armed with six shooters are only O.K.

As the Western revival thunders toward us, I suggest you wrap yourself in the meditative retelling of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. This new production brilliantly spreads lastingly over a panorama of yesteryears' great western landscape as well as the fatalistic internal life of the enduring legendary outlaw. The project is the result of Brad Pitt's powerful cachet as a super star (a guarantee of decent Box Office). He was able to produce this saga-size film for a meager sized Indie budget. His instincts were correct and he did all his jobs as star and producer exceedingly well. For his portrayal of Jesse, he's won the Venice Film Festival acting award and the film itself is a wonderfully classy and intelligent realization. Settle comfortably into your cineflex seat and be enraptured by this insinuating emotional experience that keeps your memory on edge worrying that the sharp tinge of gun powder-charged questioning will spontaneously ignite and, pow! There is a deep satisfaction to be gotten from the steep romanticism of the West as the last frontier of American mythology. Grab this quickly and enjoy it because a violent, trampling herd of Western lore is due in November, being driven by the Coen brothers with cattle baron money from Paramount Vantage and Miramax. Its title is No Country for Old Men. (I may have to heed that advice). And, oh yeah, out there is Takashi Mike's Sukiyaki Western Django playing very well abroad.

Sure, The Assassination of Jesse James straddles the truth side saddle. As a document, James' story is as head-on accurate as a horse's backside but, oh, what a touching horse's backside it is. The movie indulges in the closing episodes of James' tragedy as based on Ron Hansen's 1983 novel of the same name. Directed with impeccable care by New Zealand newcomer, Andrew Dominik and photographed by the fine artist Roger Deakins, Pitt's performance and imagery summon up the vaporous beauty of the glamorous, self-damned, doomed angel. James in his 1880s time, was as popular as a rock star. His fans adored him and, like the craven coward, Robert Ford, James asked of him, "You want to be like me or, do you want to be me?" Ford is played with a new found capability by Casey Affleck. He leaves the audience with a prickly thistle of disturbing emotion on the back of its neck at the film's conclusion and, like the entire legend scratches at disbelief for a long time. Also, nettling under the skin are Sam Shepard as Jesse's older brother and train robbing partner and, as his solicitous wife, Mary-Louise Parker enhances Jesse's loneliness. Fine l'il ol' Sam Rockwell as Ford's brother polishes off the dazzling, low key supporting cast.

The director's narrative, so artfully contrived, spins the far-beyond fictional account of James, the bloodletting bank robber, into fine and durable whole cloth. James leaps off the old dime novels' pulpy pages of his time into the glossy Vanity Fair magazine world of celebrity as heroism. This movie is not the first however, and it won't be the last. Bruce Springsteen sings his praises as did Woody Guthrie in years past. Chapter and verse of the ballad of Jesse James can be recited by most adults: Following his early days of Confederate guerilla raids, his violent life of cruel renegade thefts were, early on, as aggrandized as Robin Hood's, in a time of anti-re-constructionist sympathies. Newsmen and fiction writers created the lanky, lonely figure we continue to find strikingly attractive. The Assassination of Jesse James paints a portrait of the slain outlaw that will hang in your memory like Frederic Remington paintings of the old West. The purposeful use of the palette of color hazes any thought of the brutality that frames the scenes.

Guy-Jean de Fraumeni is the producer/writer/director of award-winning European and American feature films. He has been a judge at Major Film and TV award competitions including the Oscars, the Emmy's and various film festivals. Sarah Halsey assists him.