© T. J. Stiles 2007
“We cannot understand each other, except in a rough and ready way,” E. M. Forster wrote in Aspects of the Novel. “But in a novel we can know people perfectly. . . . In this direction fiction is truer than history, because it goes beyond the evidence, and each of us knows from his experience that there is something beyond the evidence.”
I reached for my dog-eared copy of Forster’s little book to sort out my thoughts after seeing the film The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, a superb adaptation of Ron Hansen’s fine novel. The movie and novel both deserve an award for truth in advertising, for the story is relentlessly about this historical event and the relationship that led to it. That leads to a pair of obvious questions: Is it true to history? Does it even matter if it is true or not?
My answers are: Yes, much more than any other movie on Jesse James; and, much to my surprise, yes, it matters a great deal.
Why am I surprised? Because fiction and films about Jesse James have always existed in a separate universe of make-believe, one that bears little relationship to history. Even before his death, Jesse was liberated by fabulists to serve the purpose of the moment: to play a dime-novel superhero in fantastic adventures to enthrall urban clerks and teenagers—to rise up as a populist Robin Hood in battle against the monopolistic railroads—to stand in as American Myth personified. Richard Slotkin, among others, has produced vast quantities of career-making scholarship on the commercial mythology of the West (including that of Jesse James). At this late day, it seems downright silly to hold any kind of popular entertainment about Jesse James to a historical standard.
But along comes Assassination. To be sure, it has inaccuracies and omissions (more on those in a moment), but for the first time I felt that I was watching a James movie truly rooted in historical reality. In part this is because director Andrew Dominik limits his room to get things wrong by zooming in on the relationship between Jesse James and his eventual killer, Bob Ford. Almost everything that does not directly pertain to it is left out. Spared the distraction of errors or egregious rewriting of history, I felt myself drawn into these characters.
And that leads us back to Forster’s quote. Jesse James lived underground, deliberately leaving little trace of himself; Bob Ford was a self-promoting liar who gave contradictory accounts of his brief time with his victim. As a biographer, I was constrained by a scarcity of evidence in drawing conclusions. But Ron Hansen and his interpreters, Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck, fill these figures with life. Yes, they go beyond the evidence, but so much the better: The inner lives they portray on screen emerge organically from what we do know about the historical men, so that they are round, full, believable characters. Pitt captures the mercurial Jesse James perfectly: One moment charismatic, gregarious, friendly—then murderous—then friendly again—then sick with remorse—then vicious once more. This is not only true to life, but authentic and believable in Pitt’s performance. The same is true with Affleck’s Ford, a needy hero-worshiper filled with pain and resentments. It may or may not be what Ford was truly like, but it is a provocative interpretation that usefully infuses history with imagination.
I don’t agree historically with everything in this film, but Dominik does on screen what I tried to do in my book: Take the story of Jesse James seriously, not as myth but as a human reality. He succeeds admirably.
Of course, the film is ripe for historical nitpicking. Take, for example, the train robbery that opens the movie: the Blue Cut raid on September 7, 1881. Jesse James had already killed Ed Miller by this time, for one thing. And Jesse himself strode through the aisles, his mask removed, announcing his identity to the passengers as he denounced the railroads for funding the reward offer for himself and Frank. It was a dramatic moment whose potential is missed in the film.
Another example is the portrayal of Governor Thomas T. Crittenden by James Carville (who is perfectly fine, except it is hard to get past the novelty of seeing Carville on screen). He delivers a line from Hansen’s novel about how Jesse James claimed to be avenging the Confederacy, but had selected none of his victims for that purpose. This was in fact an argument made by Jesse’s detractors at the time, most notably by the prosecutor William Wallace in his autobiography. In reality, Crittenden was very sensitive to the political support for Jesse James. In his memoirs this Democrat wrote, “I confess there was a large element of my own party who had more sympathy with such outlaws than with my undertaking to suppress them.” In his inaugural address he declared, “No political affiliations shall ever be evoked as the means of concealment of any class of law-breakers.” The movie tosses aside Crittenden’s main worry.
Perhaps most glaring are the omissions. Jesse’s mother Zerelda, a towering figure in his life, is completely absent, even though Jesse moved from distant Tennessee to the region close to her farm in the final months of his life. The enormous reward offer that Crittenden strong-armed out of the railroads is another item simply left out of the story. Even Jesse’s wife, Zee, says virtually nothing, to her husband or anyone else. And the disastrous break-up of Jesse’s final gang is cut down to the story of the Fords, Ed Miller, Dick Liddil, and Wood Hite, leaving out the capture of Jesse's cousin Clarence Hite and the tumultuous trial of another follower in Jackson County.
My biggest historical disagreement with the film is with the most important scene: Jesse's assassination. The director leaves the impression the Jesse wanted to be shot, that his actions otherwise were inexplicable. But the Fords gave good reasons for why things happened as they did. Jesse was engrossed in preparations for their departure to carry out a high-profile robbery. He was going in and out of the house as they readied the horses. It was an unusually hot April day, and Jesse took off his coat. He realized his guns would be visible. Off they went. Then, in one of those quirky little human moments that need no big explanation, he got up to dust or possibly straighten a picture. No suicidal tendencies required.
On the other hand, countless details seem exactly right—including a hilariously inaccurate exchange of close-range gunfire between Liddil and Hite. They did indeed miss each other with shot after shot at close range, the kind of true-to-life inaccuracy that Westerns rarely depict.
But this fact-checking is beside the point; I still believe it is unfair to hold historical drama or fiction to strict factual standards. The omissions and inaccuracies in this film serve the story and the characters, and as a viewer I honestly cannot find fault with them. As a piece of filmmaking, Assassination is stupendous: beautiful, haunting, intimate yet epic. As I mentioned before, it shuns the shoot-em-up model to take the story of Jesse James and his killer seriously, in a manner I find completely engrossing and convincing. As a biographer, I find it to be equally convincing, even a pleasure. It gave me the unique experience, in watching a Jesse James movie, of feeling that I was watching Jesse James.
