Film/ The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

“The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”, a solemn and plangent requiem for an era, opens on a closing note: the last pitiful and nearly profitless train robbery by the James Gang, reduced to little more than a rabble of unreliable petty criminals half-heartedly commanded by the famous brothers, Frank and Jesse. Soon after the gang will disband, the brothers going their separate ways.

Frank is an Old Testament thief, patriarchal and practical, yet humble in a way. He sees the world in front of him and opts for retirement when the gold watches and extra cash of bourgeois travelers no longer outweigh the rustling posse always at heel. It is really a business decision; maybe, he says, he’ll try his hand at selling shoes.

Jesse is not free to make such a sensible decision. Outside the law in entirely different ways, ruthless, fearless and driven by more than profit alone, he is keenly aware of and tortured by his dual nature as animal and man. Brad Pitt majestically portrays Jesse James as an increasingly haggard lion, roaming a shrinking plain, worn down yet ever bristling with intuitive insight, animal ferocity and deep understanding.

After the breakup of the gang and Frank’s departure, Jesse’s isolation allows for the entry of Robert Ford- Bob, 19 years old and devoid of any compelling characteristics beside a narcissistic need to be noticed and a blind willingness to believe in traits he obviously does not possess. In an enclosed garden the wannabe gangster flinches uncontrollably at the sudden appearance of two snakes which are already caught in Jesse’s absolute grip and decapitated with casual mastery, prey to be sautéed in garlic.

Casey Affleck has an uncanny feel for these empty and unknowing characters, blind to their own neediness and supposedly ignorant of the destruction they flawlessly execute. With a small arsenal of tics and evasions Affleck draws a brittle portrait of fussy and superficial exactitude that can only barely cover the Black Hole at its core, a compellingly contemporary image in contrast to Pitt’s timeless majesty, cornered and doomed.

The famous bandit is the hero of Bob’s worship and he cleaves to Jesse like a blood-sucking slug. Feeling spurned by Jesse and unable or unwilling to accept his human and subordinate status or the loss of Jesse’s solar radiance, Bob turns in vengeance to the only other authority he knows: the Police. He betrays his former comrades and makes a deal to bring in the Big Man. As an empty coward, his only possibility of heroic stature is a supreme act of cowardice.

Bob raises his gun to the occasion, not considering that it is Jesse who has given him the weapon and offered his unarmed back. Bob pulls the trigger. He denies his action as he runs to telegraph the Governor, delirious with ideas of reward and applause. His notoriety is short and loveless- Jesse is still the object of everyone’s affections and, even in death, it is Jesse’s image that carries imagination and hope.

Bob and his brother Charley- accomplice to the murder- take to the stage profiteering in artifice, re-enacting nightly, the fateful moment. Jesse had once asked a terrified Charley if he ever thought of suicide. No, always something else he wanted to do, was his honest and cautious reply. But it is not too long before these theatrical replays of shame lead him to take his own life. Bob moves on, opening a saloon in Colorado where he will eventually be gunned down by an old acquaintance who is unable to rest with the injustice done a decade before.

Andrew Dominik’s beautiful and stylized film unfolds in post-apocalyptic monochrome, a gothic Book of Hours, all quirky medieval illumination in prairie Sampler simplicity. Heavy blankets of dark clouds bear down on inky black horizons squeezing out the thinnest possibility of escape.

Film/ Into the Wild

Based on a true story, Snow White goes on an arctic safari, dressed in the Emperor's New Clothes. "Into the Wild" (2007), with screenplay and directed by Sean Penn, the unquestionably sincere humanitarian and gifted actor, is ultimately an unconvincing collection of calendar art and cliche, strong-armed by good intentions into a predictable and neutered propaganda piece of mono-dimensional caricatures.

A Road Film with no journey, just movement, "Into the Wild" is self-defeating in its blinkered view of the young central character who, in all his vast wanderings, seems to discover nothing he didn't already know, thanks to Byron, Tolstoy, Thoreau, et al- except, perhaps, what poisonous plants to avoid.

Sadly, "Alex" comes off as a narcissistic and frozen personality incapable of maturation, of being moved by actual experience. Though his style and focus are completely different, he embodies the same narrow-minded, fixated willfulness and impermeability as his cruel father. Son and father also share an approach to life that is decidedly mental: dad is a genius aerospace engineer- and emotionally sentimental; both blame others for their volatility. The father lashes out at his wife; the son is his own target.

"People" and "Society" are destructive and bad- the young man runs from a truly traumatic and difficult childhood. Luckier than most, he encounters more than a new family's-worth of characters--among them an old widower played with shocking and quiet complexity by Hal Holbrook--all hopelessly honest, loving and generous, but the young man remains unhealed and unheal-able. He can allow that the people and society he meets along the way are good and supportive as long as it doesn't really matter, or change his plans. He appears unable to be touched rather than determined.

He is all blindness and surface. Chock full of childhood hate, disappointment and disillusionment, "Alex" has no courage for inner battles, no room for a different view of himself. Just an outer path whose destination feels certain from the start, and, frankly, would have made a more interesting and challenging film told from that perspective: intentional suicide.

Unfortunately this character does feel all too familiar- a person who attempts to google-away his faults, ignorance, and anxieties, coming up with pedigreed cliches that obviate real scrutiny. He is more un-born than wise, trusting in all the wrong places. His fate is accidental. If this was the intended focus of the film it was unclear, and unclearly represented.

The film itself has a shocking and ethically questionable moment when a scene includes a real-life aged eccentric desert artist recluse who does not appear to entirely understand that he is talking to Movie Stars in a Hollywood Film. From a directorial and aesthetic standpoint it is also a terrible mistake to include this footage. First, it contradicts the film's reductive equation of movement with journey, especially odious in a condescending sermon improbably directed at Holbrook's old veteran to get out and see the world. Much worse, however, the scene takes the viewer out of the point of view of the rest of the film, that instantly becomes even thinner, make-believe next to the raw vitality of a true voyager.

Film/ The Man From London

"The Man From London", a baleful and beauteous convergence of image, sound and meaning, is the latest masterpiece from the legendary Hungarian director Bela Tarr.

Extracting the "everyman" hidden in the improbable armature of a Georges Simenon detective thriller, Tarr reshapes character and tale into a modern and merciless slow-motion re-enactment of the ancient story of "The Flaying of Marsius"- the mortal presence reduced to a nameless night Watchman whose only claim against the gods will be the mere attempt to act and survive in a hostile and stifling world.

In mythic black and white- geometrical, spare and atmospherically gorgeous- Chance opens the story. Seeping darkness of night ebbs to reveal a tattered old boat; a waiting dockside train; two men; a heavy valise; a ruse more successful than clever; a struggle.

Still clutching the treasured case, one man falls and the sea dinks him in like a drop of ink. The other man stares into nothingness, then walks away, defeated- much too easily and probably not for the first time.

The Watchman sees it all from his cage-like station above dock and rail. Slow, methodical and intent on winning the prize that fate has flashed before him, he descends, grappling hook in hand, confident. Master of this tiny corner, he knows its ways and almost too easily retrieves the valise retreating to his perch. The haul is a shoal of shimmering small banknotes, which he lays out to dry on the old-fashioned stove heater. Not a fortune, it is just enough to be too much.

By morning, his shift over, he ambles down to the dockside cafe and then home. The other man follows, a vague intuition or desperate hope murmurs that there may be something to suspect, but ultimately neither the power nor a direction in which to proceed materialize.

Naturally, Apollo will not deign to show up at this claustrophobic dead-end sea town where even the vast horizon glares into an impassable barrier of blinding, empty whiteness. Enter the god's adjutant-accountant: the Inspector, nearly omniscient, the difference can be calculated in age and bother. He needs no knife to skin his victims, so thin is the worn down layer that life has allowed them.

At the cafe the other man from the night before, Brown- drawn in as if by magnetism- squirms under the Inspector's droning speech that, really, only the money is wanted. In fact, a percentage will be offered for the return of the bulk, no questions asked, no formal charges. We know the pinned man thinks the money is lost into the watery past and has no way to comply.

The prize has already begun its corrosive action: the Watchman flares in the shell of his marriage and rises to the opportunity of protecting his beloved daughter's dignity. He buys her a small cheap fur from the talking heads at the local shop. She knows better than to think of it as a sign on the road to a better or different destiny.

The women strain to comprehend the all too predictable actions of the men, and, why must it always come to this. Why is there so little range, so little opportunity to call forth and nurture whatever humble gifts they might posess?

The drowned man's body has washed ashore. Brown's wife has been summoned in an effort to lure him out of hiding. Even the Watchman is confronted: surely, at the least, he saw something the night of the crime?

The Watchman is in many ways the Inspector's equal and, like him, sees the puzzle taking shape. When his daughter unknowingly delivers the penultimate piece he reads the inverse treasure map and hurries to the spot that he suspects will mark his, and everyone's, defeat. Next, he will bring the valise of money to the Inspector and claim responsibility for all that has happened in the wake of the crime.

Ancient though he may be, the Inspector is a thoroughly modern man and reminds the Watchman that only the return of the money is of significance. Wasn't everything else. after all, just self-defense?

Completing his task the Inspector portions out a very few bills between two envelopes. With the leaden words of tumbled tombstones, he mouths his shock and sorrow at the course of events. As tokens of compensation to Brown's wife and the Watchman, he offers the envelopes, leaving them behind, as he daparts.

Film/ Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia

Director Ulrike Ottinger slowly pares and burnishes this boisterous fantasy into a small jewel of radiant perfection. "Johanaa d'Arc of Mongolia" opens like a bygone era children's storybook. Paper-thin and somewhat tattered painted stage drops merely pretend to evoke the once-opulent interiors of the Trans-Siberian Railway and the vibrant world outside.

A troop of rambling polyglot charmers jostles amiably in this crowded and mobile house of cards: an uncomplicated and affable Broadway chanteuse; a Baedeker-immersed bourgeois German frau; an exotically dark and beautiful, young tomboyish vagabond; a rich, fat, gay, crooning vaudevillian; an amusingly pompous Russian general and his handsome, straight-faced tap-dancing adjutant.

A sister trio cabaret act entertains in the Dining Car where a small coterie of trolls and ingenious helpers create operatic splendor in this thin environment. Magisterially overseeing both characters and tale, the elegant Lady Windermere (Delphine Seyrig, in her last film role) is a modern-day sorceress and know-it-all MC, unrelentingly cheerful and resourceful.

All too quickly this world of "players and painted stage" attains its limit and the party breaks up, the men shuffling off to repeat performances of well-known roles in familiar locales. Only the women will venture further east. Suddenly the diorama of Act I gives way to a real, dimensional world as they transfer to the Trans-Mongolian Railway, whose accommodations are more substantial if decidedly less luxurious.

A vast panorama of dry mountains and cloudless sky begins to emerge when the train is forced to a halt, ambushed by a Mongolian princess and her Amazonian warriors. The travellers are taken hostage, though the circumstances quickly change, altering their status to that of honored quests.

The opportunity immediately appeals to all except the uncertain frau who must choose between this uncharted experience on the Steppe and a difficult retreat to her urban obligations and hotel reservations. She decides, however, to stay, initiating an astonishing vision of timeless tribal life. The realm of the warrior princess is ritualized in every aspect- even the smallest actions are imbued with meaning and significance, direct lines of access to an ever-present transcendent.

Restless in a tame world, the exotic vagabond seems to find a natural place in this rough and vital community. The sister trio and Broadway star, artists and shape-shifters accustomed always to making their own way in any surroundings, adjust quite easily to this very out-of-town run. Lady Windermere perfects her Mongolian, interprets the archetypal signs and symbols, witnessing and cataloging the spectacular variety of creation and customs as she mediates the two cultures.

The harsh clash of sensibilities falls squarely on the frau when she unknowingly hangs out her laundry to dry and is nearly attacked by the Mongolians who believe the exposed wet clothes will bring threatening storms. She survives this ordeal and in giving up the modest propriety of bourgeois habit opens the way for a different journey. Ambling on the grassy plateau at the edge of a ravine she becomes spellbound with the resonant mandala of a simple white flower and descends a deep cavernous path that erupts into a colorful, shimmering grotto- a benevolent shaman at its potent magnetic core.

Above ground the annual festival of the Mongol tribes unfolds as a vast and varied living artwork- rapturously beautiful, unexpected and dichotomous, reconstructing the object of its inspiration, life itself.

A cycle fulfilled, the festival, season and story come to a conclusion. The women are escorted across the desert to the train that will take them out of this magical realm, back into a sense of time that can only go violently and mono-dimensionally forward. The vagabond has chosen to remain. Astride her pony, costumed in silky vest and fur-trimmed hat, she blends seamlessly into the Mongol tribe, waving her former comrades farewell.

With the reliability and exactitude of a metronome Lady Windermere divines and dictates foible and fact as she sips tea from a lidded cup, ensconced in the Salon Car of her oriental counterpart- a contemporary avatar of the warrior princess, stylishly dressed for the business world of Paris. One last glance back reveals a single horse and rider galloping frantically toward the lumbering train and, with flawless precision, the vagabond leaps into the waiting arms of the knowing Lady. Like the frau she, too, has surrendered to a freeing vision: that it is more important that the dream rings true. She makes the best of it, becoming the manager of a Mongolian-themed restaurant.

Ottinger, who also wrote and filmed "Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia", fashions a creation hard to describe: tender and joyful, funny and knowing, unafraid of darkness, always inclusive. What looks at first like a kaleidoscopic patchwork of infinite detail- from an impossibly heartfelt and campy performance of "So Long Tootsie, Goodbye" to a matter-of-fact on-screen, real-time ritual animal sacrifice in broad and glorious daylight- is more synthesis than collage. Through the prism of Ottinger's unique sensibility the spectrum of discrete elements composing her story co-mingle into a bright and singular vision.