The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford definitely veers into Terence Malick territory, but with some interesting differences. Firstly, the obvious similarities. Both Malick and
Assassination director Andrew Dominik love to set lonesome types adrift in stunning vistas of natural beauty, draping the proceedings with intricate, evocative narration. (In her amusing but scathing review, Stephanie Zacharek of
Salon writes that "when Jesse's wife ...wipes her hands on her apron, we're told that she 'wiped her pink hands on an apron' -- because, you know, we probably ascertained that she has hands, but we might not have noticed that they were pink.") Certainly both open themselves up to charges of pretension and self-indulgence, as well as praise for taking their time to evoke a delicate mood and definite perspective in their visuals, instead of just shooting a mere setting in which stuff happens.
But the differences are telling, particularly in terms of cinematography, by the master cameraman Roger Deakins. In
Assassination, wide-angle lenses are not favored and when master shots are used, the edges of the frame are blurred, drawing our focus to the people at the center of the frames. In one memorable shot, Jesse James (Brad Pitt) stands on a railway awaiting an oncoming train in the black of the night. We only see him and a few blades of grass illuminated by the lantern and as the camera zooms over his shoulder, the darkness is all that remains for a few moments, until the train arrives and illuminates a corner of the screen (though, revealingly, not all of it). Here, as elsewhere in the film, Dominik chooses to isolate his elements of interest and obscure the rest.