"I was only 20 years old then; I couldn't see how it'd look to people" That's ones of the heaviest lines. This movie helps you visualize how much of history has been made by young men acting on impulse
The way the narrator tells you what’s going to happen before it does, gives the story a sever, devastating sense of finality. Combined with the soundtrack, and the acting from the whole cast, still one of my favorite films 13 years later.
I was just thinking about that too as I watched it. It's almost to pay double respect, because yes we know what's going to happen, but it's still shocking nonetheless, but instead of relying on the shock and horror of Bob Ford being gunned down, it relies on the quiet melancholy, as though to say, yes this happened well over 100 years ago and while the shock is gone there's still a lingering sense of melancholy for those lost in time to history... although as long as there are still filmmakers to tell the stories...
Main rules of cinema. Never use a narrator and show, don't tell. They do both of those sins in this film, and it works better than any other movie ever made. For me, this IS the greatest piece of cinema ever created.
It runs like a Greek tragedy. It's the fall of a "great man" with the narrator functioning as the Chorus, and the audience knowing how it ends walking in. Jesse has his fate, and so does Bob, and no matter what they do, they can't escape it. Part of what makes it really special is that one of them, Jesse, seems to know his fate throughout. He talks like a mystic at times, and he sees it all ending in that gorgeous execution scene. But poor Bob is an innocent. We all know history will write him off - when not actively reviling him - but he just can't see it. He really thinks that he can be a "great man," too, by performing this deed, only coming to realization years later and far too late. I love this scene as his anagnorisis, but instead of it being this explosion of recognition, it's all done quietly and with his sad smile. This film was (and is) SO sadly ignored by the general public, which is a shame because it's just so beautiful and brilliant.
@@svenusling Very well said! I think film narration is a complicated thing. It's always fake, somehow. Showing moving image is not the same as living through something. Sometimes narration can bring up the events in a more fitting way than just showing it
" what I expected? Applause. I was only 20 years old then. I couldn't see how it would look to people. I was surprised by what happened. They didn't applaud."
In my opinion, the greatest film ever made. A psychological look and harsh truth of the “idol” and the “idolator”, the disillusionment of the fan when faced with the celebrity and ramifications of the actions of both. It is a story of severe regret, one that makes you truly feel pity for both men.
The follow-up line with a downcast, ironic delivery makes it even better - “I was surprised by what happened…they didn’t applaud…” as they both nervously laugh
@@MeAbroad2004 This year it has started hitting especially hard. Especially around Xmas. Looking back at all the times you took for granted with the people you loved... thinking those times would last forever. But they never do.
"Even as he circulated his saloon, he knew that the smiles disappeared when he passed by" Something about that line just seems so depressing. A man who has it all but emotionally has nothing at all.
Yeah it's a lovely line and the way they shoot it is like he's moving through water but there's no ripple effect from his movements, if that makes sense? Like as soon as he moves by it's as if he wasn't there...
You know that an actor is good when, with a few imperceptible gestures, pauses, words, can move you until the point he draws a teardrop out of your eyes. I can say that Casey Affleck is definitely a good actor.
"The light going out of his eyes before he could find the right words" Even in death Bob wanted to have some cultural impact in the same way Jesse did, even down to the last words, commenting on a dusty picture. Such an innocuous phrase, but steeped in interpretation and meaning and discussion over decades. Bob couldn't manage even that. A tragic, poetic end.
This movie really should’ve been considered a masterpiece. The acting and writing is absolutely amazing. And it provides a good story even if you don’t enjoy the Wild West.
My dad loves western movies and so do I. My mom and older brother on the other hand not so much. My dad had stopped by my house several times while this movie was on and kept asking what it was. So I told him and he said he would have to check it out. When he realized how long it was it turned him off a bit. I nudged him a bit to just watch it. After he watched it thru the first time he watched it right again a second time in the same day. He said it might be the most perfect western movie he had ever seen. My mom was even blown away by how great of a movie it is.
“He kept to his apartment all day, flipping over playing cards…” *music shifts* “Looking at his destiny in every king, and Jack.” Goosebumps, every time.
Robert Ford: A man so shunned that the movie he was featured in did not win a single thing. No nomination, no award, not even as much as a recommendation
Nah..Critics loved this movie. It just didn't perform well on the box office because it was "to long" and "boring" for the mainstream. But even in Germany at that time i heard a lot of of good critics about this movie before it even came out.
@@luisdaniel7027 debatable...Jesse groomed him for his act..the interplay between both men actually left Robert Ford with no alternative...was Jesse cowardly in inviting a young starstruck youth to destroy himself? The myth, the complexity are all open to dispute...what people seemingly want is a conclusive understanding..blame syndrome... when the reality is always submerged in the internal psyche and cultivation(s) of manipulation....
I'll watch Shawshank any time it comes on, but I have to say it's much easier to digest for a lot of people. It runs about 20 minutes shorter; the characters and their desires are much more one-dimensional; and it has that feel-good ending with everyone getting what they deserve. This one is much more dense. It demands something from the audience, and Lord, that ending. So beautiful but so, so sad. It'll always be the better movie because it's better written and better made, but Shawshank will always be the more popular, I think.
This music is simply amazing. I didn’t realize until a little while after watching that the composers for this film also composed the music for The Road. Its just so powerful
Something I never noticed before is that as he flips open his newspaper at 3:43, you can see for a split second that he's reading the St. Joseph Gazette. As if looking for news about Jesse's family, even ten years later.
I love how Ford seems to pause and stare for a long moment at the entrance as he walks around the bar to sort thru his mail. Almost like he has a premonition. I only noticed that on the 80th or 81st time watching this scene. 😁And the newspaper is such a nice touch. News stories contributed to the James’ myth that seduced Ford, and it also hints at the beginning of a new era - mass communication and commericialism (the ad for baking powder) - as another old west legend is about to die. Great, great movie.
Edward O'Kelly came up from Bachelor at one P.M. on the 8th. He had no grand scheme. No strategy. No agreement with higher authorities. Nothing but a vague longing for glory, and a generalized wish for revenge against Robert Ford. Edward O'Kelly would be ordered to serve a life sentence in the Colorado Penitentiary for second degree murder. Over seven thousand signatures would eventually be gathered in a petition asking for O'Kelly's release, and in 1902, Governor James B. Ullman would pardon the man. There would be no eulogies for Bob, no photographs of his body would be sold in sundries stores, no people would crowd the streets in the rain to see his funeral cortege, no biographies would be written about him, no children named after him, no one would ever pay twenty-five cents to stand in the rooms he grew up in. The shotgun would ignite, and Ella Mae would scream, but Robert Ford would only lay on the floor and look at the ceiling, the light going out of his eyes before he could find the right words. When I first watched this at the theatre simply brilliant.
I'm just mesmerized by Casey's performance. It's perfect and real in a way that I feel I could just reach through the screen and be right there in that place with him. His way of talking and mannerisms are exactly like friends I've had.
The pain in every line and facial expression is just phenomenal. I really think Cassey Affleck should have got an Oscar for this. One of the most powerful performances in cinema history in my personal opinion. He showed how complex the young man was. And all the diffrent emotions his character is feeling we are feeling it with him. Edited: Also I love a little detail in this film. If you see in this scene his Saloon is in a tent. That was because he brought the property and it burned down 6 days later. So he erected a temporary tent saloon. And he died 3 days after the fire.
@@adamelam6385 Your just showing how dumb you are when it comes to his and the story of Jesse James. Robert Ford was a teen when all of this happened. So tell me at the age of 18-19 did you hijack and rob a train? Did you join and ride with one of the most feared gangs and outlaws of the time. Did you find the courage to draw down on and kill one of the most notorious and deadly Western Outlaws? Did you open a bar and show your face every day in public even though you know everyone around you is calling you coward and murderer? Jesse was extremely paranoid at the end of his life that one of his gang members would kill him for the reward money. He even killed a couple of his old gang members due to suspicions he had. Bob and his brother Charlie became paranoid that they’d be next, so no doubt this played into their reasoning to kill Jesse, so with all that said I would say Robert Ford was in no way a coward, maybe not brave in the real sense of the word, but in no way a coward.
@@sublime2craig I like how you glorify brutalizing and murdering innocent people for financial gain. Do you still feel that way about murderers and robbers today? Or does it not have the allure of the old west? He was a back shooting coward and his worthless brothers did the more honorable thing instead of living and being known as the brother of a back shooting coward.
@@adamelam6385 and we don't do that now with celebrities? What would you call rap music? I would say they "glorify" violence and murder a lot more than the myth of the golden Wild West. Your trying to pick a fight like a little petulant child and an internet tough guy, so again your dumb and uninformed on pretty much everything your commenting on. So fuck off and try to look like a "Cool Guy" somewhere else...
There are a few lines in the book that explains it better than the movie, perhaps, describing Jesse as "a faulty judge of character" and having "a callow need for attention," which may be why he agreed to be around Bob in the first place. Being confronted with someone as obsessive as Bob fascinated him and stroked his ego, especially as he came to grips with the fact that his own career as an outlaw was coming to an end and his list of loyal men growing thin. Toward the end of the story he actually becomes envious of Bob, telling him, "If I could change lives with you right now, I would," and wishing he could have a clean slate without the burden of his crimes.
Also, if you believe the theory that Jesse had been contemplating suicide and allowed his assassination to happen because of that, you could argue that he always saw in Bob the possibility that he would be the one to kill him and kept him around BECAUSE the idea interested him. I was listening to The Cine Files podcast episodes about this film and they described it better than I could: That for Jesse, Bob was like the gun that you buy when you're considering shooting yourself. In your more lucid moments you hate the gun, you despise it and wish it were gone, but you just can't get rid of it because you know one day you're going to be pushed over the edge and use it. When they came to the scene where Jesse gifts Bob a new handgun, they said, "If Bob is like a gun, then Jesse just bought bullets, too."
Some of the best cinematography and music of any film from the 2000s. Great script and acting too. Would love to see an extended cut. Interesting ending too.
This movie was absolutely the epitome of storytelling and cinematography. Yet did it receive accolades? Did any actor here get nominated? Did the director or producers get awards? Did the cinematographer even get a mention?
I still vividly remember seeing this masterpiece in the cinema with my dad on its release day in 2007, one year before he committed suicide. Still to this day it's the most haunting and masterful movie I've ever seen
I think what this story tries to convey about Bob is that sometimes the time and context can get the best of anybody, that when confronted we can all be 'cowards', we're human and we're designed to make mistakes. Forgiveness is key and that, if anything, is what this movie hopes to impart to us all for Bob.
I pray for the man Robert Bob Ford...a cursed world he lived in...never meet your idols and familiarity breeds contempt...Bob's no worse than Jesse...rip bob
So many great character actors in this film. The actors in Jessie's gang did great job with their smaller roles. The casting director did a hell of a job. They really should give awards to casting directors.
Where else do you find such cinematography, acting, and music altogether? This movie is a mix of mainstream and high art, closer to high art. This is I believe why it is so underrated.
This film was equally as beautiful as it was haunting. It is a perfect film, a dark lullaby to show the line between fame and infamy. I think the film was released 10 years too early.
Just wonderful cinema. Thank you for sharing. I do however wish someone would post the same clip + the credits which do add to the class of the films ending. Genius is an understatement.
The person Zooey Deschanel is portraying in this scene, Dorothy Evans, committed suicide that night. Robert Ford was raising money for her funeral when Edward O'Kelley shot him.
@@Johnnysmithy24 I tried to find the source I read about it but haven't been able to find it. If I remember right she had asked to work as a prostitute in his club and he declined it. She was an opium or morphine addict as well, I think that's how she died, from an overdose.
Robert didn't even get his death scene, which I believe, plays into the narration that plays over top of, not only was he never destined for great things, his death didn't even go out "famously" on screen. Nice edit. I also like how the end of the film bookends the beginning, where you have the narrator talk large about Jesse and how amazing he was supposed to be, and here you just get the blunt reality of Bob's lasting memory.
This is one of my favorite western movies in history. What's the crazy part is that Robert Ford wanted to be somebody so badly. He wanted to be Jesse and when he realized he couldn't, he killed him. Then when he was killed, nobody cared. He died a coward. He did all of that for nothing.
This isn’t a movie. It’s art. Everything about it is perfect - the writing is poetry, the narration flawlessly delivered, the music is haunting, the cinematography is stunning and the acting is phenomenal. Just a beautiful film.
I’ve watched this film a dozen times at least, and just noticed now that as he’s walking into his bar, there is a dead cat hanging by its neck in the doorway.
Sheep incapable of thinking for themselves and who need to be told what to believe really have no clue what this movie is about. Robert Ford wasn't a coward; the title of the movie specifically is ironic. It's a reference to how the whole narrative is skewed and how that failure of people to see through it doomed Bob. The title says one thing, yet in the movie, we see Bob isn't a coward at all. He shot someone who clearly wanted to be shot, and who otherwise would have shot him. When Jesse James is assassinated, it's hardly even an assassination. On Bob's part, it's self defense. On Jesse's part, it's suicide. Jesse James did nothing to earn his god-like reputation, Bob Ford did nothing to earn his status as a monumental coward. The movie displays this perfectly outright. At the beginning, his character is described with poetry, as an angelic, larger than life Robinhood who could do no wrong and is utterly magnificent. Yet in all of the scenes with Jesse, he does nothing impressive. In fact, he's kind of an asshole. He's an asshole who just gets worse and worse as he gets more and more stressed out. He beats up a child for not answering his question while holding the child's mouth shut, carrying himself like he's some badass while doing it. That's not the badass noble superhuman god-status Jesse James Renegade Outlaw we know from the stories. And he knows that. He cries after doing something so pathetic, realizing how deep of a hole he's dug himself, and the fact that he's so famed and beloved does nothing to save him from this reality, and underlies every interaction he has with every human being on the planet. He also is suicidal. Similarly, we see Bob as someone who is very relatable and trying to earn his way, yet at the same time no one takes him seriously and he can never do it. He did nothing to deserve getting treated with so much disrespect, let alone treated that way while so ambitious. The reality of trying to become Jesse James is futile, and as times goes on reality kicks in that Jesse very well may murder him. They're both victim to folk tales and reputation. They're 2 sides of the same coin: the reality of fame. Jesse could never leave his criminal lifestyle since it had made him into a mythic figure, Bob couldn't become Jesse because there was never any merit to the myth of Jesse James anyways, and he also couldn't escape the thing that finally made him famous, nor could he escape the type of infamy that would curse him the rest of his life. Both of their fates were sealed and they died the same way and for the same reasons, defeated by their own criminal lifestyle and vices, and accepting their fate with no emotion about it. If you watched this movie and what you took away from it was that Jesse James was God and Robert Ford was an emotionless sociopath, please turn your brain on.
Great analysis and I totally agree! Every time I see people saying "The title gives away the whole story" I cringe because they missed the point so badly.
well the story of how Jesse was shot is only known from how Bob and Charley told it. For all we know, the reason Jesse took off his gun belt and faced the picture on the wall could have been under duress from the Ford brothers
There is a interesting Coincidence with the ending in the context of the Assassination of Jesse James: When Edward O'Kelly says the line "Hello Bob" before pointing and shooting Robert Ford with the Shotgun, there is a similar situation in the case of the outlaw, Billy the Kid, and another western -> Sam Peckinpah's "Pat Garret and Billy the Kid". According to the story and movie, Billy kills a lawmen named Bob Olinger, who has been chasing down way before Pat Garrett, and right before killing him with a shotgun, Billy says a similar phrase to Olinger "Hello Bob". Almost if the roles were reversed.
