The Assasination of an underrated movie

How's this for underrated: a movie so unloved that the studio held back on it for two years and even critics could not appreciate. In retrospect, movies like Blade Runner and 2001: A Space Odyssey were not appreciated critically upon release. Sometimes there's a movie that's so singular in purpose and intention that it even confounds that establishment, which can only be a good thing. But like anything worth something, it has peculiarities, and its not for everyone.

That movie is The Asssassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford which to me is the greatest Western in nearly a decade. I avoided the movie for eons due to word of mouth and the suggestion that it was merely emulative of the worst aspects of Terence Malick. Given the absolute veneration I hold Malick with in my heart, it seemed like something doomed from the start.

What we have as released is an odd beast, an edit the result of two years bickering with a studio after a four hour cut was praised by those who saw it as a masterpiece. It does drag a little in places. There's some story compression in voiceover that's a little awkward. But it's a slow burn, and you have to give it a chance to wear down your defenses. It is not Malick lite, although interested in atmospheric cadences visually it isn't as lyrical as Malick and presents a more direct novelistic approach to theme.

What it is however is brilliant, a morally complicated investigation of an epic act of quintesstially mythic American values deconstructed into all its messy, vague, human bits and pieces. A single bullet revebrates through space and time in this movie, a single act becoming a part of the legend of America but the fallout in reality being eternal consequence. This is a movie that dares to show the silent clumsiness after a gunfight and linger upon it. That allows its characters to go to their darkest places willingly, but ultimately offers each the chance at some personal moments of true humanity. Casey Affleck is the true revelation here: the movie is his, and not Pitt's at all. At first his acting choices seem a little odd and disturbing. By the films' end however you see where it was all going and it's not exactly what you think. The film allows mercy and pity upon even the worst acts, but at the same time remaining a very lucid examination of the unconscious we've woven this country together from, collectively whether we'd like to or not.

This is a movie for those who don't mind lingering, or examining the sky or a field for what portents it might hold, for those who want to feel something complicated and uneasy when it strikes them. I think it's an absolutely ignored and shabby masterpiece, and it's a damn shame our own critical community would pillory an attempt to make art within the studio system, even if it isn't totally successful. Ultimately, the film cost next to nothing and features one of the world's biggest movie stars. And in the US, after sitting on a shelf for two years, was released only in major cities for a short period.