Grade:        B

Moral:        “I wonder about that man that's gone so wrong.”

Affected from its title down to its toes, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is less an anti-western than an outright dirge for the whole mythos, and a confrontationally inert one at that. It’s a self-possessed emulation of Malick to be sure, but resplendently so, even if never as subsumed into sublimity as that master. Still, the film certainly doesn’t hurt for trying, and its self-devouring, self-abnegating, and, most curiously, self-wary delivery finally achieves serendipity during its plaintive closing moments; it’s just the getting there that can be exhausting.

Which isn’t to call the movie boring per se, just so focused on the moment and the milieu that some scenes feel within inches of catatonia, albeit purposefully. One wonders how the original 4-hour version played, if an even broader length would’ve ironically made it flow smoother by better establishing its pace: this final-cut tends to ebb and flow such that the slower parts are made slower by their juxtaposition with faster passages, whereas if the whole thing were slow, it might’ve been more readily transcendent. Still, that the movie is so achingly close to brilliance, even despite having been subjected to audience test-screenings and subsequent edits, is itself something of a miracle.

There’s a bothersome narration that feels like a Blade Runner – esque imposition, or something unfortunately necessitated by all those aforesaid cuts (from 4 to 2.67 hours; a 33% reduction in material). And again, it somehow manages to come off as both abbreviated and overlong. Nevertheless, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is satisfying, even edifying, on a level so far removed from the skittish idiocy of modernity that it’s tempting to love it purely for its cerebral daring. It’s methodical to the brink of madness, melancholic to the brink of woe, and has its gaze so acutely drawn upon the death of humanity and the rise of its totemic reflections as to instantly separate it from the empty, over-edited insanity of current cinema. If not a masterpiece, then it’s at least a triumphant lunge in the right direction.