Film III

III: Andrew Dominik, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

I read the book this is based on a couple of weeks ago and I wasn't massively impressed. This didn't fill me with great optimism for the film - which I was determined to see despite being let down by two people who'd wanted to see it with me. The film is, indeed, long. Stately. Dominik loves his establishing shots of rugged and snowy terrain - his thoughtful men against wheat fields. I was reminded of Tarkovsky, and his Nostalgia, although I wondered whether it had been channelled through Gladiator. Given that Didley Ridley is a producer, that may be likely. Terence Malick is also there - the longeurs of The Thin Red Line.

It is the last days of Jesse James (a Brad Pitt going to seed) and hero-worshipper Robert Ford (Casey Affleck, Ben's brother, and never better) wants to join his gang as he identifies so closely with the bandit. Frank James (Sam Shepherd) is less keen to have him on board, but the Ford brothers take part in the final train robbery. Post-robbery the gang splits, and some members start showing up dead. (As I recall from the book, the rest of the gang are cut out of the profits of the raid, which wasan't clear here.) Ford seems to realsie his hero has clay feet, and decides to ask for an award for the killing of James - and kill him he must, lest Jesse kill him first.

What suddenly struck me is that Jesse is looking for Robert to betray him, and this was before the film links the week preceeding Easter to the death of James on April 3. Jesse/Jesus and Robert/Judas? Well, maybe don't push the parallels too far; here Judas wanders the land almost disconsolatedly, repeforming his murder rather than hanging himself, but I think we're in the same branch of storyland. The film (and book) is about myth-making - there were already dime novels about James in his life time, already folk songs, and Ford was a man for whom fandom was more than a goddamn hobby. The book is even more clinical than the film in its dissections of fame - there was some business about gravestones which was left out which was a shame - but we see the increasing polished image of James as technology (bicycles, trains, photography) develops.

But for me the book failed for lacked of action - there is just the one raid - and yet curious its internality, its waiting, worked better on film. There was a sense of a menace about to explode (like the World War Two action in The Thin Red Line. Dominik hasn't directed since Chopper - another study of an unlikely and criminal celebrity - but he's coaxed some great low key performances out of his cast, few of who I could put names to despite knowing them from the cast list - and a number of whom, inclduign Affleck, have worked with Gus Van Sant in contemporary versions of the social class depicted here.

I still figure the film could have shaved half an hour off - or needed to built up the dime novel reputation at the start to balance it out - but definitely, after much struggle to see, the new film of the year.

Trailers include Sweeney Todd (ooh Alan Rickman's in it - and they appear to be pretending it isn't a musical) and Into the Wild, as well as Eastern Promises and The Kite Runner. I hope to catch all these.

Totals: 3 [Cinema: 1; DVD: 2; TV: 0]

Reading IV-VI

"In times of hardship, furniture takes a back seat." H'mmm.


IV Peter Robinson, Gallows View (1987)
V Peter Robinson, A Necessary End (1989)
VI Peter Robinson, The Hanging Valley (1989)

On my travels north I noted a cheap boxset of ten Peter Robinson novels, so I thought I'd pick them up where they had less distance to travel. These are Pan reprints, mostly dating from 2007. I've read books 1, 3 and 4 (A Dedicated Man (1988) is absent) of the Inspector Banks series.

Banks is a London detective who has moved north for not entirely specified reasons (a desire for a quieter life is the only real clue) and now works in a town in north/east Yorkshire, possibly somewhere like Ripon, Richmond, Pickering or Selby, but not quite York. As such the temptation is to compare to Dalziel and Pascoe - and, yes, both inspectors are sensitive, cultured men, although we get more of Banks's musical tastes than Pascoe's, with rich family lives. The difference is in the supporting characters - Banks's superintendent is no grotesque and his sergeant isn't the infalliable, famously ugly and gay Edgar Wield. There's a sense of a progressive political agenda here, too, although there is a greater sense of closure than Hill offers (although this may change as the sequence progresses).

Some brief summaries: Gallows View features a peeping tom and a murder, and Banks brings in a university psychologist, Jenny, to provide a Tony-Hill style profile of the suspects. Banks is almost unfaithful with Jenny, and the tension will not be forgotten. Neatly Banks's wife, Sheila, is also a victim of the peeping tom.

A Necessary End: a policeman is stabbed to death at a protest rally, and a semi-corrupt London copper is brought in to solve the case whilst Banks tries to find the real suspect. It doesn't help that Jenny is now going out with one of them. Is this why Banks left London? A darker tone as there is collateral damage.

The Hanging Valley: a few years back there was a murder and a disappearance in a nearby dales village, and Banks is called in to solve a second death, and makes the inevitable connections. This involves him flying to Toronto which is where the Yorkshire-born Robinson lives. I guess the events that ended the book - although I was pleased he dared to close with it.

I like these, although the musical tastes seem to be spreading. Are all detectives in fiction readers? H'mm. There's a reference to Philip K. Dick in one of them. The problem is once we get into exposition in the final chapter - Robinson's characters become ciphers to explain or justify things to each other, and it suddenly turns into a bad melodrama. I hope he gets over it - I don't feel this in the Hill novels or the McDermids.

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PS - a pile of Rankins in the local Oxfam at just under two quid. They fit the infamous two quid rule, but I haven't read the one (Knots and Cross?) abrinsky bought me yet.