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Having seen the film in New York City, I departed the theater thinking I hadn't been much affected by it. But it continued to work on me. We haven't said good-bye to Jesse James—who, along with Billy the Kid, is the most featured American character in movie history. In remembering Jesse James, we recall the killer and we despise him. We recall his assassin, Robert Ford, who shot James unawares in the bosom of his home and family—where Ford was a guest—and we despise him as well. Indeed, we wind up loathing the assassin far more than the murderer he murdered. Because we know Jesse James was more than a murderer. James was a rogue, yes, and—in a brilliant performance—the beguiling Brad Pitt plays him that way to the hilt, always coiled, quicksilver reactions, and you never know which Jesse will out. Rather like Gollum in the Lord of the Rings, Pitt's Jesse James is torn between possibilities. The allure of violence, yes, but he also recoils from these moments. We see him weeping, quizzical.
He finds his own violent tendencies—stopped short at the last moment—funny. Jesse's laugh is more menacing than anything else. He loves his children. They, he declares, will "grow up clean." They do not know what he does. They don't even know his real name as he lives out a series of pseudonymns, moving frequently with his ever-loving and faithful wife, Zee. (Apparently because the film was cut from a running time of three and a half hours to a mere two and a half, much of the role of Jesse's wife falls out. And—unlike the exquisite book by Ron Hansen on which it is based—the film does not introduce Jesse's formidable mother, six feet tall.)
The film's ambivalence about violence is one most Americans share—fascination, then recoil. We hate the officially sanctioned violence of the Pinkertons: systematic, coldly planned and executed, in contrast to Jamesian bursts of violence. Against the harshness and beauty of a landscape sharply rendered by cinematographer Roger Deakin's elegant images, we are keenly aware of life on the edge—threatening to topple over into use of the gun, a casual acceptance of the possibility of shooting or being shot. And the film reminds us of the looser identities of the post-Civil War era: James could hide in plain sight, using his aliases. There was no internet, no sharing of files on people's jobs and medical histories and all the rest. There is something attractive about this: you can elude the law, maybe start over again. You have resources of evasion. In an era when we feel hemmed in and exposed on all sides—too many people know too much about us and to no good end, all avenues of escape are being closed off—it is hard to start anew. There is a fluidity in James' world, his violent world, by contrast to our far more "domesticated" one.
Casey Affleck as Robert Ford portrays chillingly the ingratiating social climber cum stalker, always seeking to insinuate himself, classically passive aggressive. We loathe him and we understand him. He would bask in the reflected glory of a figure who had achieved legendary status in his own lifetime. James asks Ford: "I can't figure it out: do you want to be like me, or do you want to be me?" Affleck/Ford is the quintessence of ressentiment: envy, hatred, desire, love. We recognize the symptoms. We recall Mark David Chapman signing his name "John Lennon" preliminary to becoming Lennon's murderer. In the aftermath of his murder of James, Ford enjoys a brief lionization followed by a lengthy shunning. His name would be remembered, yes, but not as a hero. He would be "the Coward Robert Ford" until he, too, met his nemesis—a man who made his name by murdering the man who murdered Jesse James.
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