that rejection. I wanted to
explore that. To me, he was the
beating heart of the story, and
that’s what made it a British
story. We’re perhaps more
willing to explore what happens
when you don’t succeed. And
Jack has such a warmth and
vulnerability that, even when
he’s being tough and mean,
I thought would carry us
through. He’s a little broken
bird. Zak was here in the UK, so
I could go and visit him. He was
very honest with me. In early
drafts of the script he [Zac] went
to even darker places, based on
stories the real Zak told me.”
3/4 JULIA AND PATRICK
Paige’s larger-than-life
parents, played by Nick
Frost and Lena Headey.
“Initially, the family were a bit
cagey and I had to reassure
them that I wasn’t there to
laugh at them. After that, they
didn’t shy away from sharing
a lot of their demons. I tried to
suggest the darkness of the
past, the way they talk about
how wrestling saved them from
depression and addiction. I had
the documentary transcribed,
which was useful. It gave me
certain rhythms of their speech.
When Nick Frost says, ‘I was in
and out of jail three times
before the age of 21. Mainly for
violence,’ I lifted that from the
documentary.”
5 DWAYNE JOHNSON
The Rock. played by The Rock.
“With Dwayne, I needed
someone to represent the gods
of wrestling. And Dwayne was
involved in their real life. The
moment when he tells Paige
she’s going to go on Raw was all
true. So why not have him serve
that function in the film? For
the scene in London’s O2 where
they annoy him and he yells at
them, I watched a lot of old
Rock promos and did a Greatest
Hits version. I brought it to him
on the day, he looked at it, went,
‘Okay,’ and came back and just
did a fucking Rock promo. It
was gold dust. I could never
have come up with that. He was
great.” CHRIS HEWITT
FIGHTING WITH MY FAMILY IS OUT NOW
ON DVD, BLU-RAY AND DOWNLOAD
I DON’T KNOW how I’d missed it, but I had
a great time with Andrew Dominik’s three-hour
opus detailing the final months of the vulnerable,
paranoid, infamous outlaw Jesse James.
The James gang, led by Jesse (portrayed
delicately by Brad Pitt) and Frank James (Sam
Shepard), are all but washed up. Most of the
original gang have gone and the train heist at
the start of the film — shot in shadowy sepia, the
ghostly hooded heads waiting in the wooded
railway sidings strobe-lit by the clickety-clackety
passenger train — sees the James brothers working
with two-bit hoodlums and hangers-on. Enter
Robert and Charley Ford, played by Casey
Affleck and Sam Rockwell respectively, eager to
join the now infamous brothers on a more
permanent basis, hoping that life with the James
gang will be much like the comics detailing their
escapades. They are met with stoic, jaded
indifference, particularly from
Frank, whose departure to
Australia is imminent. Like an
Ansel Adams portrait, he
silently scowls at the floor,
framed by the blackness outside
a barn they are hiding in after
the heist, his younger brother
Jesse coming in from the
darkness and leaning on the
door frame. There is no
dialogue; the shot is just held,
and held and held.
There were no words for
emotions in the old days, just
actions and then death. Frank’s
unceremonious departure
from Jesse’s life seems like
the beginning of the end, and
without his brother and with
a disparate, dispersing gang,Jesse is plagued by increasing loneliness and
paranoia. Although his wife and children appear
to be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow
of bloodshed and crime, his retirement is fleeting
as Robert Ford encroaches insidiously, like a
pallid fan-stalker, into his life, finally claiming it,
in Jesse’s own home, with one cowardly shot to
the back of his head.
The narrative plays out like tar rolling down
a log — inexorable, morbid and fascinating. What
struck me was the supreme confidence of the
filmmaker in realising his epic vision. Although
the painterly sequences that contextualise the
isolation of the Wild West drew my attention in
some cases for the wrong reasons: there is a
classic John Ford-esque shot, a doorway framed
by the blackness of the inside of a cabin — all we
can see is the distant brow of the hill as Jesse, on
his horse, approaches the door, gradually getting
larger. Yet as he gets nearer, Dominik jump-cuts,
speeding up the moment — presumably because
the ensuing scene did not warrant this portentous
opener. It didn’t; but he may also have been under
pressure to tighten things up. At this point I
couldn’t help but say out loud, “He lost that
battle,” at which point my husband guffawed, my
disbelief was no longer suspended, and I was
suddenly in an edit suite with Dominik, his editor
and a couple of execs pondering their potentially
devastating but ultimately non-negotiable notes:
“Do we really need to stay on the empty chair
that long, Andrew?”
When you are teetering on the verge of genius,
which Dominik definitely is in this film, every
frame matters. A duff stroke in an otherwise
breathtaking canvas seems like a clumsy daub.
I wouldn’t claim to know if the film would have
been even better at a bold and beautiful three-and-
a-half hours, or at a dynamic, Casey Affleck-
centred two, but I did find myself wondering.
What sets this film apart is the passion,
intensity and sensitivity with which these men are
portrayed. When Jesse sobs into his saddle, it
seems incongruous because the cowboy bandits
we are used to seeing on screen don’t cry. When
Robert Ford fights off his tormentors, who
discover his collection of Jesse
James comics, we are invited to
see him as a bullied child, not a
cold-blooded killer. I felt at
times that these men loved each
other deeply, that what Andrew
Dominik wanted to explore was
the devotion that men have for
one another. Robert Ford didn’t
just adore Jesse James, he
wanted to be him, and when
he couldn’t be, he killed him,
then toured his crime as a
vaudevillian stage show, his
obsession with, and possession
by, Jesses James never ending.
This film explores platonic male
love and obsession with
shimmering intensity and
uncompromising masculinity.
I loved it.THIS MONTHACTOR AND DIRECTOR JESSICA HYNES ON THE
ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE
COWARD ROBERT FORD↓
THE
FIRST TAKE
CLUB
Classic movies, seen for
the very first timey