The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

As ever, a beautifully shot film by Roger Deakins.

Directed by Andrew Dominik
Written by Andrew Dominik, Roy Hanson (novel)
Starring Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Sam Rockwell, Sam Shepard


I've spoken before about twists, and about the spoiling of them.  It's not always easy to talk about a plot that takes a sudden and unexpected turn, without at least hinting about the change of direction.  On the other hand, do any of us really want to spoil a big twist in a film for anyone else?  Do we really want to give the ending away, do we really want to take away the joy of discovery?

It is with some relief, then, that I come to The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.  If ever a film was upfront about its intentions, this must be it.  There's no trickery in that title, there's no leading you down the wrong path.  Nor is it fundamentally incorrect, like Krakatoa East of Java.  Nor, for that matter, is it gently prodding you to the wrong conclusion, in the sense that The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance wants you to believe that the fellow in question is James Stewart rather than John Wayne.  Nope, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford does exactly what it says, and never lets you forget it.  We've read the last page of the book, and now we're bound to watch the earlier pages being fitted into place.

In a sense, we're involved, we're voyeurs, we're caught in a story that we know will certainly end in death.  We know who's going to be killed, we know who's going to do the killing.  And this isn't a story like, say, Titanic, where we know the iceberg is coming but here's a girl and a boy making fools out of themselves to distract you for three and a half long, tortuous hours.  Nor is it Gandhi, a film that begins with the certainty of a shooting but never lets you think that the shooting is the be-all-and-end-all of the story; it's a conclusion that we have to reach, but there's so much more to see along the way.  No, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford isn't about anything else.  You're here to see the murder.  The title even tells you that it's not going to be a noble or heroic death.

However, the characters don't know this.  Hence the voyeurism; we know exactly what's coming, and how ugly it's going to be, but we're going to watch all concerned find out for themselves.  It's very appropriate that the film has us follow not the charismatic, legendary outlaw, but the coward of the title (a superb performance by the younger, and arguably more talented Affleck), his weakness, his guilt.  Jesse James is often distant, or part in shadow, or moving away from us - while we stay much closer to the antihero of the tale.  And that, ultimately, is where we belong; we can relate to the coward far more than we can relate to the outlaw.

Relating to the coward, following him voyeuristically, these are not easy subjects, and it would have been very easy for this film to fail, to become preachy and heartless.  Fortunately, it doesn't fail at all (although it could have been twenty minutes shorter without losing anything), thanks to a fine script and beautiful and inventive photography by the always wonderful Roger Deakins.  It's the elegance of the movie that allows us, nay makes us engage with Ford's weak and petty everyman.

Towards the end of the picture, Ford is asked why he did it:

Well, he was going to kill me.
So you were scared, and that's the only reason?
Yeah, and the reward money.

 Fear and avarice, in the end, are dreadfully human qualities, whether we want to admit to them or not.

Crazy Heart (2009)

Jeff Bridges.  I like Jeff Bridges.  Look at him, isn't he lovely?

Directed by Scott Cooper
Written by Scott Cooper, Thomas Cobb (novel)
Starring Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Robert Duvall, Colin Farrell




I like Jeff Bridges.  Doesn't everyone like Jeff Bridges?  There's something comforting about his name appearing in the titles of a film, and more so as he gets older, as he grows into a fine vintage of bearded gentility.  There always was something about The Dude that suited Bridges, easy-going, charming, likeable; as the man says in The Big Lebowski, 'he fits right in there'.  Jeff Bridges, an actor who fits right in.

Anyway, there's a point to all this, and it's not really anything to do with The Big Lebowski.  It's a lot more to do a question of balance.  See, on the one hand, I look at this film Crazy Heart, I've heard some good things about it, not sure if I'd really be interested, but hey, Jeff Bridges.  I like Jeff Bridges.  Doesn't everyone like Jeff Bridges?  On the other hand, here's a film that threatens to be full to the brim of country music (and it carries out said threat with ruthless efficiency), and that's not something likely to endear a picture to me.  That said, the country music's largely performed by Bridges himself, so... well, that just confuses the issue, doesn't it?

And in the end, I have to say that I'm rather glad I did see it.  It's a simple, straightforward picture - one of the long history of little American Indie* flicks, where someone in difficulties meets people, not a lot happens, and their life ends up a bit better.  But it really is a fine example of the genre: very nicely put together, endearing, charming, believable.  There's little more important in a film of this nature than the characters being sympathetic, being people you can relate to and who you want to succeed; after all, the film is all about the people in it, no big flashes or bangs, no giant robots and things that go whoooosh.  The characters need to be the kind of folks that you'd side with, that you'd help out if you happened upon them.  What does Crazy Heart have to offer?  Jeff Bridges.  Of course you'd side with Jeff Bridges.  Of course you'd help him out.  Of course you want things to work out well for him.

There's really not a great deal to the film, but it's all the better for that.  There are only a few characters - Maggie Gyllenhaal as the nice girl, Robert Duvall as the old friend, Paul Herman as the sensible and considerate agent, Colin Farrell as the, um, other old friend - and they're all likeable and hope-for-the-best as well.  Simple, straightforward.  Nice.  Charming.  The kind of movie that it's really hard to dislike, and a lovely way to spend a hundred minutes of a Sunday evening.

Now, if they could only have found a way to do it without quite so much country music...



*I'm not particularly comfortable with that word, but it serves a purpose here.

The Constant Gardener (2005)

Rachel Weisz and Ralph Fiennes, nice people.

Directed by Fernando Meirelles

Written by Jeffrey Caine, John le Carré (novel)

Starring Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz, Hubert Koundé, Danny Huston, Pete Postlethwaite

Sooner or later, I’ll find myself writing about a film with a weak cast, or, at least, with a poor choice for the lead. There’s no shortage of them around, after all. I’m also bound to find myself writing properly, sooner or later, about Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, seeing as I’ll be mentioning it again here. But that’ll have to wait until the dvd emerges, as it really is a little too long since I’ve seen it. If you’ve made the effort to read this, you probably want something that’s fresh in my mind, yes? Anyway, I’m going to pretend that you care about that, not too concerned about the truth of the matter. 

John Le Carré is concerned about the truth. In place of the usual disclaimer in the credits of a fictional film – any similarity to the name, character or history of any person is entirely coincidental and unintentional – we have a message from the author:

Nobody in this story, and no outfit or corporation, thank God, is based upon an actual person or outfit in the real world. But I can tell you this; as my journey through the pharmaceutical jungle progressed, I came to realise that, by comparison with the reality, my story was as tame as a holiday postcard.

The man has a point. I’m not here to argue about the behaviour of the pharmaceutical industry – not that I dispute Le Carré’s assertions nor any of the other damning criticism and horror stories about such companies’ roles in poorer countries, far from it; I simply wouldn’t like to claim that I have any particular knowledge about the subject. Rather, I’m writing about the movie, as a movie rather than as a protest, and yes, it does have certain similarities to a holiday postcard. 

That’s not to say it’s a bad film; it isn’t. Nor is it to say that I didn’t enjoy it, because I did. Perhaps it didn’t help that it was lacking the elegance, subtlety and rich emotional undercurrents of the most recent picture from a Le Carré novel, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Perhaps the comparison is unfair: The Constant Gardener is an entirely different (and much newer) story, and I accept that it’s not entirely reasonable to set the two movies alongside one another just because they came from novels by the same author. On the other hand, I’m not an entirely reasonable person. Most of us aren’t. 

Anyway, even if I put Tinker, Tailor to the back of my mind, I nevertheless stand by my postcard comment. There’s nothing essentially wrong with postcards. A good postcard is attractive, interesting, offers a straightforward method of communication for simple ideas, coupled with a nice, straightforward, uncritical picture of where you are. So it is for The Constant Gardener.  I’ve no qualms with the look of the film – César Charlone has photographed a fine piece of work, taking every drop of beauty from the gorgeous east African vistas, without compromising the bleakness of the poverty. But the look is what postcards tend to do well. 

What they lack is the scope for a complex message, for a depth of understanding, and depth and complexity are both sadly lacking from The Constant Gardener. The good guys are good, pure, noble, lovely. The bad guys – the Three Bees pharmaceutical company and its supporters in diplomatic circles – are unswervingly evil. I’m sure there are deeply unpleasant people in pharmaceuticals and diplomacy, and I’m sure there are terrific individuals fighting against them, but it might have been nice if the brush strokes had been a little less broad, if there’d been some shades of grey, if the conflict between Good and Evil had been not quite so absolute. Only Rachel Weisz plays a character at all in the middle between nice and nasty, and even then – as a dedicated campaigner against the dangerous and abusive behaviour of Three Bees – we’re never in any doubt on which side she really falls. 

So, ultimately, we’re left with a tremendous cast all slotting into obvious and shallow roles. And with such acting ability, with a gifted DP and a fine director in Meirelles, the lack of complexity seems wasteful. Yet, as I said, it’s not a bad film, and I enjoyed it. But it could have been a magnificent film, and I could have loved it. That it didn’t work out that way really is a bit of a shame.

Apocalypse Now Redux (2001)

Dennis Hopper in a very nice picture.  I've not mentioned him at all.

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Written by Francis Ford Coppola, John Milius, Michael Herr, Joseph Conrad (novel)

Starring Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall

I’m not going to bother writing much about Apocalypse Now. For the most part, this is because I assume – and I think it’s fair to assume – that nearly everyone who’s likely to see it has done so, has formed clear opinions about it, has read or heard or talked about it. Like Citizen Kane, or Star Wars, or Casablanca, it’s one of those films that’s gained such prominence over the years that there’s really nothing left to say. 

 

But there’s another reason for not really writing about Apocalypse Now. It’s because I’ve not really seen it for a few years. Not how it ought to be seen. What I have watched rather more recently is Apocalypse Now Redux – yes, that’s Redux, not Director’s Cut. The difference is apparently important. According to Wikipedia,  

Redux is usually considered by fans and critics, as well as director Francis Ford Coppola, a completely new movie altogether.

Now, when I got to see a completely new movie, I’d normally hope that it wouldn’t contain two-and-a-half hours of an existing movie, and a classic at that, but let’s not split hairs. Coppola wants us to know that this isn’t a director’s cut, but rather the cut that he, the director, would like the world to see. As I said, it’s an important difference. Apparently. And I certainly wouldn’t suggest for one moment that Coppola wants to be seen as doing something more artistically and cinematically significant than other directors. Not that kind of guy at all. Not the kind of director who would see himself as a step above everyone else, the kind of director who wouldn’t allow anyone to see Abel Gance’s Napoleon unless they watch his own edit with his father’s score, rather than the way Gance wanted it to be seen. What? Oh, right. 
 

Anyway, I digress.

Twenty-odd years before the Redux, Coppola and editor Walter Murch felt able to discard the material that surfaced in the Completely New Movie version.  As is normally the case with director’s cuts – not that this is a director’s cut, of course – there are a few scenes that are a little more bloated than they originally were, a minute here, thirty seconds there, short clips of footage trimmed for good reason and now restored because the director likes them. But it’s the two long scenes that have been added that really mark the difference between the Redux and the original cut, and which account for most of the extra fifty minutes that the new version runs for; the first of these is an odd detour into farcical sex-comedy, as the men pay for shambling, hurried sex with the Playboy bunnies they’d met earlier; the second has the boat stop off at French plantation, bury Clean, and have a chinwag over dinner.    

Two long scenes that Coppola and Murch once felt able to discard. What changed? What is it about a clumsy scene of small-scale prostitution or a dull diversion with a few Frenchmen that had no place in a superb movie of 1979 but are now deemed absolutely necessary in the twenty-first century? Well, the former is inescapably 70s, seemingly escaped from a sexploitation flick, so quite how that contributes to making a Completely New Movie for today, I’m not certain. And the latter, although it briefly threatens relevance with the opportunity to pay respect to the death of such a young man, is mostly concerned with eating up time whilst achieving nothing in particular – the kind of dull, misguided scene that ends up on the cutting room floor when an awful lot of films come to be edited.

 

And that, really, is my point. I know it’s taken an awfully long time to get here – I need to be edited a bit more – but there it is, the point of all this rambling. Those two scenes weren’t cut at random, they were cut for a bloody good reason: that their absence makes for a better film. And that’s true of a good ninety per cent of all new cuts, be they director’s cuts or whatever; once in a while, a film (such as Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner or Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil) will be torn apart in editing, with much of what’s good about the picture taken away – but only very rarely. Mistakes happen in all walks of life, bad decisions are made, and it should never be assumed that the director knows best how the finished movie should appear. He usually doesn’t. That’s why editors exist. That’s why a good editor can make so much difference to a film.

Steven Spielberg, when editing Jaws with Verna Fields, didn’t want to lose a second of shark footage, largely because he’d spent months trying to get that damn rubber fish to work and hoped to make the most of it. Fields, thankfully, put her foot down, and the director recognises today that Jaws became the film it was largely because there’s so little of the shark and so much of the men. 
 

On the other hand, Richard Kelly clearly didn’t recognise the work put in by editors Sam Bauer and Eric Strand when it came to Donnie Darko. The m0vie that made it to the cinemas was ingenious, enigmatic, energetic, thought-provoking and thoroughly good fun – an outstanding 80s teen movie with a just-confusing-enough sci-fi story stirred in, and one of the most striking and acclaimed films of the decade. However, the release of the director’s cut showed us that Kelly was after something entirely different, a long, daft story in which every fantasy detail was explained in the clearest and least interesting terms possible. That godawful mess was Kelly’s baby, and he must have been horrified to see the editors cut it into something brisk, entertaining and, well, good.  

Given how much he put into it – financially, physically, emotionally – it’s easy to see how every second of footage recorded for Apocalypse Now would be Coppola’s baby. And easy to see how much of an itch it must have been for him, knowing for two decades that two substantial scenes of his work, his creation, remain abandoned and unseen. I hope he’s happier now that fifty minutes is out there for the public to see – but that’s no reason for the rest of us to be interested. The 1979 original was wonderfully edited, and a magnificent piece of cinema. Watch that. Don’t indulge Coppola. He’s had more than enough indulgence as it is.