The Western is violence. The Western is death. “Death is the predominant element of the westerner’s world view, death of a certain kind, that is, death understood in a certain way,” states Peter A. French. What kind of death does the westerner seek? Which Homeric end could claim his life? The heroic showdown, the bloody last stand, or the ignominy of being gunned down like a dog in the street?
To inhabit the west is to court death’s embrace, the sound of metal clearing leather, the creaking sinews of the hangman’s noose, the burning rays of the desert sun dissolving those last precious drops of water. Serrated rocks strike out of murderous panoramic vistas, rattlesnakes slither between the cracks, and carrion birds seek failing flesh. Death stalks the Western like the coyote stalks the hills.
Jesse James is death, yet he never set foot in the west. The Western’s most infamous son hailed from Clay County, Missouri and terrorised the east, even venturing as far as New York. Lullaby narration soothes our ills, “He considered himself a Southern loyalist and guerrilla in a Civil War that never ended. He regretted neither his robberies, nor the seventeen murders that he laid claim to. He had seen another summer under in Kansas City, Missouri and on September 5th in the year 1881, he was thirty-four-years-old.”
That flawed matinee idol Brad Pitt is this particular reincarnation of Jesse James. John Wayne assumed the Michelangelo or Donatello contrapposto pose as David, a Renaissance cowboy with bronze skin and marble revolvers. In contrast, Brad’s Jesse James is the vampire prince of Denmark in decline, his once handsome face scared with a dreadful pallor that longs to climb back into the Pitt of his name, “Granulated eyelids caused him to blink more than usual as if he found creation slightly more than he could accept.”
The lyrical narration continues to pander to the supernatural; “Rooms seemed hotter when he was in them. Rains fell straighter. Clocks slowed. Sounds were amplified.” Jesse James is a wraith shrouded in montage, we see strafing clouds cut the sky, fires streak across the plains, cast from the gaze of a man who knows that his last days are upon him. Does he see what Jane Tompkins knows? She believes the Western is, “About men’s fear of losing their mastery, and hence their identity.”
Frank James can see the writing on the wall. He can see the banal mediocrity strangling his brother. Frank remembers real men like Cole Younger and Bloody Bill Anderson, these men aren’t a gang; they’re a dangerous joke. Frank sneers with disdain as the awkward youth Robert Ford indulges in sycophantic hero worship, “You’re not so special, Mr. Ford. You’re just like any other tyro who’s prinked himself up for an escapade, hoping to be a gunslinger like them nickel books are about. You may as well quench your mind of it, because you don’t have the ingredients, son.”
Robert Ford wears a top hat like a teenage scarecrow and Casey Affleck makes him speak with a dreamer’s voice. Ford doesn’t fit; in the same way a platypus doesn’t fit, fraud and venomous to humans. He’s a victim, ripe for ridicule, arriving at conversations too late and speaking far too early. Casey looks like Ben, a snide copy of his brother with the heroism removed, infinitely more intriguing, his performance daring. Just as Robert wants to emerge from under Jesse’s shadow, Casey wants to assassinate Ben’s, “I’ve got qualities that don’t come shining through right at the outset, but give me a chance and I’ll get the job done- I can guarantee you that.”
And so Jesse’s wanderer acquires his shadow. He knows Robert Ford will kill him, “Do you wanna be like me or do you wanna be me?” Jesse knows because the train tracks at the Blue Cut robbery tell him, the snakes he beheads and consumes tell him. Nietzsche tells him, “To die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. Death of one’s own free choice, death at the proper time, with a clear head and with joyfulness, consummated in the midst of children and witnesses: so that an actual leave-taking is possible while he who is leaving is still there.”
Jesse James can’t step into retirement like his brother and sell shoes in Dallas. He sees enemies everywhere, paranoia clawing away at the remaining days of his life. He sees enemies in the faces of his second rate desperados. He visits them one at a time, materializing from the snow, death incarnate like Klaus Kinski in “The Great Silence” stripping away their souls before skulking back into the night.
Nietzsche tells him that, “To exercise power costs effort and demands courage.” An American demi-god like Jesse James does so by manipulating lesser mortals like Robert Ford into doing their dirty work for them. Jesse, bullies, cajoles and humiliates Robert, showers him with platitudes and gifts, isolates him from reality so the demi-god can become fully immortal in death. After all, this is the kind of end the true westerner seeks, the one he believes he deserves, and the one he chooses on his own terms, “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.”