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Lemmy Caution wrote:Replace worldly with commercial and I guess I at least see his point. It costs a lot of money to make a film and so it's easier to find the money/investors if the film is expected to be popular/commercial/make money. But why commercial and BO should dominate or be seen as the preferred/sole "aesthetic" over any artistic aspirations is really hard to justify. But why does Schickel believe films can't be art or artistic?

Dictionary.com gives contradictory meanings to "pretension". It's described as "the laying of a claim to something" and "a claim or title to something", but then there's "a false or unsupportable claim, esp to merit, worth, or importance". Do 2001 and Gerry deserve to have all those long and artistic shots? That's an opinion. You don't think one or both deserve to because you don't like those shots. They're overly avant-garde, arguably whether you think you understand them or not. So, you would most likely rather the films not have them or have them between, say, two to six seconds long on average, which I believe is normal for modern mainstream films. I think "pretentious" is much better defined in Dictionary.com, though I admit it's still flawed. To be fair, I rarely use it and when I do, I mean it as an undeserved "claim to distinction or importance". I have no problem with filmmakers having "established importance" and "indulgences" in films, which is normal, but if one thinks those things are generally overblown and smug of the filmmakers, what would be an even better word or two, according to you? I can see why avant-garde films are vulnerable to the criticism because they arguably have a greater amount of "established importance" and "indulgences".

Warning: I did watch this movie in full - all 30 hours or so. I wish I hadn't. I don't like Brad Pitt. I'm still opinionated. Beware falling rocks.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (hereby shortened to The Assassination of Jesse James) is one of those movies that follows the formula:

dark + gritty = realistic = interesting


And you can't argue against this movie being realistic. Even the James and Ford families apparently called it the most realistic depiction of Jesse James' final days. Usually I firmly believe that real life is more interesting than anything a writer can come up with. There are of course exceptions. The story of the James-Younger gang has been filmed many times. It has everything a movie needs – action, adventure, romance and interesting characters. But The Assassination of Jesse James focuses on the second James gang, which wasn't nearly as colorful as the first one. And it starts with the last train robbery of the James brothers. So you get a movie about one of the most famous train robbers, who doesn't do any robbing.
'Cause they're the robbers who don't do anything. They just stay at home and lie around. For almost three hours running time! The movie covers about 2.5 years from the train robbery to Jesse's death and it feels like real time.
After the robbery the gang splits up and goes into hiding. Frank James – easily the most interesting character – leaves the movie early on. The other minor gang members are mostly forgettable, Sam Rockwell trying his best, with what little material he is given.
So Jesse James and Bob Ford have to carry the whole weight of the movie on their shoulders. In Germany this would be called a Kammerspiel (chamber play) – a play with a limited cast performed on a small stage. A director needs very good and strong actors to pull this off. And here the movie breaks down completely.
Brad Pitt. I have never understood, what people see in him – except the obvious of course. Brad Pitt graduated from the famous School of No-Method-Acting. He doesn't act, he doesn't play himself. He just is himself. It is always the same – in every movie. He is charming, brooding and depressive. When he isn't the good guy, he adds a touch of violent insanity to the mix. That's how he does Jesse James. And I have seen the exact same performance in Interview with the Vampire, 12 Monkeys, Fight Club and Troy. In a certain way his presence is even surprisingly effective. For the whole running time I had to wonder if Brad Pitt is insane in real life (no offense, maybe he is really that good).
Casey Affleck is a much better actor than Pitt. It's reassuring that at least one Affleck can act. He plays Bob Ford as a fanboy with an unhealthy fixation on his heroes. He collects dime novels of the James brothers exploits, like a modern teenager collects comics. And he wants to be just like Jesse James. He is visibly devastated, when both brothers blow him off in the most unpleasant way. We see him go from hero worshiping to hate and fear in excruciating detail. Bob Ford also gets more screen time and the only character development. In contrast Jesse is more of a catalyst than a protagonist. Sadly for me Afflecks performance gets impaired, by who Affleck seems to have chosen as a model for his interpretation of Bob Ford. I will come back to this later.
The Assassination of Jesse James insinuates heavily, that Jesse engineered his own murder by systematically manipulating Bob. Jesse and Bob are involved in a series of conversations, in which Jesse constantly taunts and humiliates the teenager. This would be really interesting, if it weren't disrupted with endless montages of Jess brooding, riding, brooding, riding, brooding, walking and so on. If they had cut out half of the running time, we would have ended up with a good psychological thriller. But like this it is just dreary. It is more boring than watching paint dry. It is like watching people watching paint dry.
Honorable mention has to go to Sam Rockwell as Charley Ford. In the latter half of the movie he is mostly alone with Brad Pitt. He is very convincing as man who is tip-toeing around a mad man with a gun.
When Bob Ford finally shot Jesse James, I let out a sigh of relieve. The movie could have just ended there. But then they had to tag on the final days of Bob Ford. When that was over, I was thoroughly frustrated with The Assassination of Jesse James. There is such a thing as too much realism.
But as mentioned before there is something else, that made it impossible for me to take this movie seriously. As you might know, in Germany every movie is dubbed. Dubbing was developed into a minor art form. Special care is given to casting the right voice actor often based on similarity in voice and/or appearance.
Somewhere into the movie I realized that Bob Ford was voiced by the same voice actor, who voiced J.D. on Scrubs. After that I noticed a distinct resemblance in the mannerisms of Bob Ford and J.D. Over time the illusion became so compelling, that I had to consult Wikipedia to confirm that Ford was not played by Zach Braff. I'm not sure if Affleck did this consciously or subconsciously, but in my eyes he is clearly imitating Braff. Especially watch for a scene, where Bob Ford has a meeting with the Governor of Missouri. He does this side-glance with a small smile, that usually indicates one of J.D.'s daydreams. When the Governor glares at him, he says, he had thought of something else. I haven't laughed so hard in some time. Imagining J.D. and Turk interacting with Jesse James was the only source of amusement I got out this movie.

knives wrote:entertaining premise.

knives wrote:Well from your descriptions it sounds like they were more miffed at it not properly representing their profession than any of it's actual qualities.

knives wrote:Asshole torturing children has been an entertaining premise since at least W.C. Fields.

NABOB OF NOWHERE wrote:

knives wrote:Asshole torturing children has been an entertaining premise since at least W.C. Fields.

No matter how many times I see it in the Tenant, Polanski giving the bawling brat a swipe always gets a guffaw from me.

MichaelB wrote:

knives wrote:Well from your descriptions it sounds like they were more miffed at it not properly representing their profession than any of it's actual qualities.

If I take my wife to anything medical, any technical errors, even/especially ones that most people wouldn't even notice, are magnified by a factor of a million until they completely unbalance the film for her. One of my great regular pleasures was watching Casualty (the BBC's E.R.) with a constant ranting running commentary, until it annoyed her so much that she banned it from our telly altogether.

MichaelB wrote:Casualty was brilliant in the 1980s and early 1990s, when it was intensely politicised to the point where politicians started complaining about it (which, naturally, was what persuaded me to start watching it in the first place). But then the hospital staff climbed down from their soapboxes and started having affairs with each other, whereupon it got a lot less interesting.

In fact, by the 2000s I only bothered watching it because of the expert running commentary from the other sofa - "What do you mean, you'll deliver the baby in A&E? Holby has a fully equipped maternity unit - I've seen it on Holby City. Don't you dare perform an emergency Caesarean - that's grossly unprofessional, and I'd sue if you weren't a made-up hospital full of pretend doctors. And what's a nurse doing operating the ultrasound equipment? I don't remember her taking time off to study for a diploma. And she can't have been any good if she's still working as a nurse. Oh look, she's taken the probe away and the picture on the monitor hasn't budged - there's obviously some conspiracy going on in the hospital to do with fake scans that we're not going to be told about."

And so on.

knives wrote:Well from your descriptions it sounds like they were more miffed at it not properly representing their profession than any of it's actual qualities. Kasdan's done a lot of good work and I trust him to do well with this entertaining premise.