38
(I am thrilled about this! It’s a 160min epic of a film. Unless I’m forgetting something this might be the longest Western ever after Leone’s 180min Good the Bad and the Ugly. Sarris also liked Yuma very much! This is looking to be a great year for Westerns all of a sudden!)
Jesse James Hits its Target: Pitt Western Swaggers Straight to the Soul
The ‘psychological drama’ of the legendary shooting is worth an Oscar—or three!
by Andrew Sarris Published: September 18, 2007
THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD
Running Time 160 minutes
Written and Directed by Andrew Dominik
Starring Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Sam Shepard
Andrew Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, from his own screenplay, is based on the ironically titled novel by Ron Hansen. I say “ironically” because the very title of both the book and the movie seem to endorse the basically one-sided thrust of the only other movie I can recall seeing on the subject, Henry King’s 1939 Jesse James, from a screenplay by Nunnally Johnson, with Fox’s matinee idol Tyrone Power as the intensely idealistic Jesse, and John Carradine as the cowardly and vintagey villainous Robert Ford. Still, that was almost 70 years ago, and yet people still seem disinclined to forgive or even try to understand anyone guilty of shooting someone else in the back even if that someone else was a murderous outlaw, albeit a heroically publicized one in the meager media outlets of his time—the stone age, if you will, before movies and television.
I should at least mention at this point two other older films on the perimeters of this story, if only because of the illustrious directors involved. These are Fritz Lang’s The Return of Frank James (1940), with Henry Fonda reprising his role as the folksier, less intense James brother from the original, seeking revenge for Jesse’s murder, but settling for guiltless Production Code closure and Gene Tierney in her first screen role; and Samuel Fuller’s directorial debut, I Shot Jesse James (1949), with John Ireland as Robert Ford living in the aftermath of his infamous act, and yet also exploiting it to make a living.
Also, I must confess that I have never seen the at least titularly revisionist remake, Nicholas Ray’s The True Story of Jesse James (1957), with Robert Wagner as Jesse James, Jeffrey Hunter as Frank James, and Carradine (1906-1988) repeating his role in the original as the sneaky assassin, Robert Ford. I doubt very much, therefore, that Walter Newman’s screenplay for the Ray remake cut as wide a swath through the James legend as Mr. Dominik and Mr. Hansen do in this latest and probably for all time definitive retelling of the Jesse James-Robert Ford doubly-deadly misalliance.
I regret that I cannot give you the exact dates of the respective assassinations of Jesse James and Robert Ford. This information is in the film and, I suppose, in the book. It is unfortunately not given in the otherwise voluminous production notes, and I neglected to write it down at the one studio screening of the movie I was privileged to attend. Working on deadline, I have not had the time to consult the book, and so I must crave your indulgence to inform you of the winter of discontent that follows the last spectacular train robbery of the James Gang in 1881 when Jesse James (Brad Pitt) was a very moody 34-year-old, and Robert Ford (Casey Affleck), a newcomer to the gang who was outspokenly admiring of Jesse, was a boisterous 19-year-old. Robert had already struck out with Jesse’s ultra-skeptical brother Frank (Sam Shepard), and Jesse was only marginally less suspicious of Robert’s ardent protestations of fealty, loyalty and sincerity in his virtual adoration, after having grown up on the newspaper legends spun about Jesse during his gang’s depredations in the 1870’s.
For Mr. Pitt himself, one of the producers of the film, and its central iconic presence, Assassination is clearly more a labor of love than a routine big-money movie-star exercise. He aptly describes the project’s emphasis as “more a psychological drama than a western,” going on to say, again aptly, “It deals with the anatomy of an assassination and its consequences.”
Director Dominik amplified the intended interiority of the two lead characters and the fearful entourage around them: “One of the things I particularly like is how these characters struggle more with themselves than with each other. Each is shaping a reality to suit his desires and anxieties, and they really do not connect with one another.”
This is as strikingly true of Jesse and Robert as it is of Robert’s agonizing older brother, Charlie Ford (Sam Rockwell); Jesse’s more realistic brother, Frank; Jesse’s dutiful but quietly suspicious wife, Zee James (Mary-Louise Parker); and the bedeviled-with-doubts gang members Wood Hite (Jeremy Renner), Ed Miller (Garret Dillahunt) and Dick Liddil (Paul Schneider). Indeed, if this period noirish drama has any relevance to our own time, it is in its galloping paranoia that sweeps across the still essentially empty landscape of the 1880’s West like a perpetual tornado of hate, betrayal and violence. It is also part and parcel of the pervasive negativity of the few interesting adult movies coming along in this dismally autumnal pall of our national existence.
Much of the ghostly aura of the mise-en-scène has been achieved by Mr. Dominik and his cinematographer, Roger Deakins, in the wintry Canadian prairies of Alberta and Manitoba, and the still-frontierlike cities of Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg. The production notes helpfully tell us: “The filmmakers found the empty spaces needed in the prairies and McKinnon Flats of Southern Alberta, as well as various other locations in Canada, where seemingly uninhabited expanses retain much of their original character and made them an excellent choice to double for territories like Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri and Colorado circa 1881.”
Who could have suspected back at the time of the American Revolution that the recalcitrantly unrebellious Canadians would provide convenient and comparatively less expensive background settings for Hollywood movie studios, not to mention the continent’s biggest film festival? Vive Canada! And its maple leaf and all that.
Among the large supporting cast members, James Carville, the liberal media spokesman and the brains behind Bill Clinton’s two victorious presidential elections, startled me at first in the role of Missouri’s Governor Crittenden, the mortal enemy of Jesse James, but I was quickly won over by his unquiveringly straight-faced actorish zeal. For my money, Mr. Carville is more than a match for Fred Thompson of Law and Order and the Republican Presidential Sweepstakes, but there is always the possibility that I am politically prejudiced.
I was also impressed by Nick Cave’s saloon rendition and special arrangement of “The Ballad of Jesse James” in the presence of an outraged post-assassination Robert Ford; by Ted Levine as Sheriff Timberlake; and by Sarah Lind, Zooey Deschanel, Alison Elliot, Kailin See, and Laryssa Yanchak as a bevy of far-from-unenticing female distractions from an essentially male-oriented narrative.
But not to quibble, the extraordinary expressive performers, male and female; the haunting interior and exterior conflicts; the painstaking authenticity of the period detail; and the subtly modulated mood shifts all combine to make a modern masterpiece of an old legend. All in all, Assassination is the most compelling piece of psychological drama you are likely to see in this moviegoing year. Mr. Pitt and Mr. Affleck are well worthy of Oscars. Perhaps they can share one together.
There Are 38 Responses So Far. »
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Was pleasantly surprised today morning. Saw some of them in heart of Chennai city. There was an old temple nearby.. 
The price and involvement of Fox itself made MNIK one of the most hyped movies ... there were fan expectations ...
MNIK made its collection on curiosity factor that did under perform at the box office for the so called 'huge' ...
MNIK was huge movie, made hugely, meant to do huge everywhere.
It was probably most hyped movie of last 20 years(since ...
Achilles... Blasting KANK and MNIK on their domestic gross is like blasting Gadar and D2's overseas gross..
These two movies ...
Quite strange.. Taran reports 16.33 Million USD for MNIK in the international Market and claims highest ever collections in overseas.. ...
I am sure once Gayle and McCullum join,KKR batting will get some boost.Batting is their major worry. 
Link
It use to be fun site when Mom use to pick "dhaan" from rice and bunch of "Goraiya" would flock ...
Well, I will not get into this but Karan's film will end its run in India between 73-75 crore, ...
That was a BOI ploy doga.rnbdj didnt beat sik opening week.They were with 42 cr for rnbdj for 2 weeks ...
satyam 20 September 2007
05:29:31 pm
Come to think of it Ford’s underrated Cheyenne Autumn (to my mind one of his best films) is probably close to this length.
goodfella 20 September 2007
07:13:56 pm
Can’t wait to see this…this and “Into the Wild” are on my weekend watch list.
Qalandar 20 September 2007
07:28:26 pm
wow, sounds great! Btw, saw 3:10 to Yuma the other day: perhaps I am too far removed from the original, but I preferred the remake: it is a more ambitious (albeit more flabby) film, and much better acted than the original. Ben Wade’s right-hand man makes for a delightful psycho, Russell Crowe doesn’t act much but doesn’t need to, with a charismatic nod to the gesturality of a “bigtime star” that hearkens back to the good ol’ days of moviestars; while Christian Bale continued his long quest to make me feel ashamed that I doubted his range once upon a time (Crowe might be the magnetic center of the film, but Bale is by far the best actor on display)…
goodfella 20 September 2007
08:01:31 pm
“(Crowe might be the magnetic center of the film, but Bale is by far the best actor on display)…”
Agreed.
goodfella 21 September 2007
08:56:14 pm
I just saw this, and I think it’s a very compelling movie, but perhaps not for all tastes. I’m reluctant to urge people to see it given some of the deeply negative reactions some people I saw it with had, but if anyone has the patience to sit through a bloated storytelling style, there are abundant rewards to take home. Many of these are visual – this is one of the most ravishingly gorgeous Westerns ever filmed, and the tone is elegiac and funereal, befitting the subject matter at hand. Nevertheless, there are scenes that could be trimmed here, and the Jesse James character doesn’t really strike as iconic an image as he perhaps should, though this is no fault of Pitt who cuts a very striking, if abbreviated, performance. Casey Affleck is excellent, although the performance that stood out for me here was Sam Rockwell. There’s also a great cameo by the always wonderful Sam Shepard.
satyam 21 September 2007
10:17:13 pm
Thanks for the thoughts Goodfella. I can’t wait for this one.
satyam 7 October 2007
09:15:50 am
I agree with Goodfella here. I finally saw this movie and it clearly isn’t for everyone (though I hesitate to say this given that this sounds a little condescending and moreover I think that audiences are hardly ever used to films that challenge them and should in fact push themselves more in this regard).
I found the film to be a masterwork. Goodfella has already mentioned the awesome visuals here. Sarris in this otherwise fine piece doesn’t mention it and I am not schooled in the same but I think that this film almost assuredly relies on certain American landscape traditions from the 19th century and perhaps a bit beyond. There might be a Winslow Homer or a Thomas Cole lurking here! But elsewhere there also seems to be a hearkening to older Dutch traditions (I am specifically thinking of the way characters are sometimes framed in windows) and beyond this a lot of the interior settings. In any case I am out of my league here but every scene in this film seems to unfold like a painting which beyond the cliche means that every scene seems to have been truly composed on canvas as opposed to through a lens.
Of course this is also the rare film these days with some reliance on the long take, a film not particularly bothered about keeping the audience attention intact with staccato cuts and so on.
I think that this is an immensely rewarding film for anyone who has the patience and the attention to get ‘absorbed’ into its world. It’s a challenging work, even a difficult one in some ways, the pleasures are not instant or obvious ones. Moroever the narrative remains enigmatic from beginning to end. But this is ultimately a work of remarkable performances, outstanding sense of mis-en-scene , stunning psychological exploration, perhaps even a nihilistic one in the final analysis which is not a demerit by any means.
I would certainly like to revisit this film. And while this is always a bit of a cliche I think it does particular violence to this sort of work to not see it on the big screen.
I note Sarris has mentioned in his review here all the earlier Jesse James films. This is by far the greatest of the film versions even if the earlier works were decidedly less ambitious ones. Of those earlier ones the Fuller version is the best.
Finally I might disagree with Goodfella just a bit on the Jesse James point. I think that James is probably kept very enigmatic here to let the refractions (by way of the other characters but especially Bob Ford) acquire that much power. Had we ‘understood’ or even ‘known’ Jesse James more we might have empathized with him (I think the film as it stands never allows us to do that) and that would have created a very different sort of work.
At the same time I am not going to argue that some of it isn’t indulgent but I think it is always a little problematic to decide in a work of this sort what can really be ‘taken out’.
HAL 7 October 2007
10:24:59 am
I’m lagging behind you guys. Got to watch both 3:10 and this one.
satyam 7 October 2007
10:31:18 am
Jesse James incidentally also has a distinctive score..
goodfella 7 October 2007
05:56:55 pm
Satyam, I’m happy you enjoyed it and doubted that you’d be one of the ones to balk at the measured pace and long takes this film carries in abundance.
Re: Pitt’s James – I agree that he has to be enigmatic, but for me, the James character here required an iconic sort of presence that Pitt didn’t particularly conjure for me. That’s all. I agree that he has to be refracted to give the Ford character “more” no question there. Affleck was superb though, as was Rockwell.
I absolutely loved the look of this film. The only other Western that looks like it, to my knowledge is McCabe and Mrs. Miller…
satyam 7 October 2007
05:58:37 pm
That’s fair enough Goodfella. probably don’t disagree here..
satyam 7 October 2007
06:07:36 pm
I must say that one can’t remember the last time when two such remarkable Westerns cropped up in the same year! 3:10 to Yuma has incidentally trended well. It won’t make more than 45-50m but this is quite good given the genre and where it started from.
One of the problems here is that it is too late to simply make a regular Western. Any filmmaker will always be burdened, perhaps too burdened, with the history. As such a film like 3:10 to Yuma, for better or worse, is ‘deeper’ than the original, but this comes at a cost in terms of attracting audiences.
Jesse James of course is not a ‘mainstream’ film in any sense and Pitt deserves a great deal of credit for being a producer here. The film just cost 30m apparently but I doubt they’ll recoup this cost.
goodfella 7 October 2007
06:12:38 pm
That’s totally true…I really hope this bodes well for future Western productions. Incidentally, if Tom Cruise had accepted the Crowe role in “3:10″ one would expect that the business would have been better here…
Incidentally, another film that seems to carry a few Western tropes is No Country For Old Men, still my most awaited American film this year.
satyam 7 October 2007
06:18:55 pm
Quite true Goodfella though I am glad they went with Crowe here.
Speaking of previews I saw one of Lions for Lambs! What an uninspiring title! Redford’s heart seems to be in the right place here but not too sure about this one.
No Country for Old Men is certainly one I’m looking forward to as well, even if I’m awaiting the Road more than this. I believe the latter is also being made into a film.
Then of course there’s that ‘oil’ film based on the Upton Sinclair novel, the one you mentioned as well sometime back, I forget the title.
goodfella 7 October 2007
06:25:02 pm
It’s called “There Will Be Blood” by Paul Thomas Anderson – and to be honest I wasn’t too sure about this one until the previews suggested another epic performance from Day-Lewis along the lines of his Bill-the-Butcher work in GONY.
Yeah “Lions for Lambs” SCREAMS “Issue Film!” which is fine although I’m uncertain about this. I do like Cruise, though, and the rest of the cast, including Streep, Peter Berg and the talented young Derek Luke is enough for me to want to see it…
satyam 7 October 2007
06:29:58 pm
Yes Day Lewis seems to have a huge performance here.
On Jesse James one of the more immediate aesthetic influences here seemed to be Terence Malick, specially the one of Days of Heaven.
goodfella 7 October 2007
06:34:37 pm
Oh absolutely, and a Western with Malick as an influence seems to be appropriate given that his films are as much an exploration of American landscape and topography as they are subversions of known American cinematic tropes.
akshay shah 7 October 2007
06:34:43 pm
Speaking of Lewism I just got a copy of THE BOXER-anyone seen it?
satyam 7 October 2007
06:37:53 pm
That’s a good point Goodfella..
satyam 7 October 2007
06:38:49 pm
Akshay: I saw the Boxer when it first came out. Don’t remember much of it to be honest.
goodfella 7 October 2007
06:43:36 pm
The Boxer’s pretty solid, Akshay, though the best of Day-Lewis and Jim Sheridan’s collaborations remains “My Left Foot,” although I also really like “In the Name of the Father.”
akshay shah 7 October 2007
06:44:24 pm
Noted Satyam, Theres that, In the Name of the Father and Last Of the Mohicans which I need to catch up on! Haven’t watched much of Lewis’s works except GONY!!!
satyam 7 October 2007
06:47:45 pm
Last of the Mohicans is essential Akshay. One of the best Hollywood scores as well as far as I’m concerned.
akshay shah 7 October 2007
06:49:30 pm
Great! Our local video store just had a massive DVD clearence, classics priced between $4-$7 including those I just mentioned, TAXI DRIVER, RAGING BULL, and countless others including some personal faves like GOONIES etc. !
goodfella 7 October 2007
06:52:39 pm
Satyam – One of the Trevor Jones pieces used for the Mohicans’ superb BG score was recently used in a football spot for Nike directed by Mann himself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55BZ2gSsSmY
HAL 7 October 2007
11:31:28 pm
Akshay, I’m a big fan of DDL. I would back Goodfella, “My left foot” is the top rack stuff in terms of performance, you should also check out “The last of mohicans” and “In the name of the father”! I personally believe that his talent isn’t used to the fullest, but he is to be blamed. After four exceptional choices, “My left foot”, “ITNOTF”, “Age of innocence”, and “TLOM”, the sabbatical phase ruined it. In the last decade or so, he only did two films, “The boxer” and “GONY”, and he was brilliant as usual!
satyam 8 October 2007
07:32:26 am
Goodfella: Thanks for directing me to that ad. I just love this particular piece.
goodfella 8 October 2007
07:44:08 am
Sure thing Satyam. A full HD version is available online, I’m sure, but yes, that musical piece is just stirring.
satyam 8 October 2007
07:39:26 pm
Just saw Into the Wild this evening. This is another absolutely outstanding work..
satyam 9 October 2007
06:48:59 am
Getting back to Jesse James I revisited all the earlier versions after watching this film. I still think the Fuller version is the best and is incidentally the one closest to the current film in the sense that Robert Ford is really the hero here. In fact Jesse James dies relatively early here. Just behind is Ray’s (also revisionist) True Story of Jesse James. Henry King’s Jesse James is also an enjoyable if relatively ’straight’ version of the story. Lang’s sequel here, the Return of Frank James, proceeds in similar fashion and is hardly a significant Lang by any stretch (the director’s Rancho Notorious and Western Union are much more interesting Westerns, and revisionist ones at that).
The one important feature in terms of which these films might also be graded is by considering how much of the post-Civil War backdrop is utilized as part of the narrative’s drive. For example in the Ray version this angle is much more important than it is in Fuller’s film. The current film in a way combines Ray and Fuller to a degree by certainly alluding to the Civil War but also ultimately being the Fuller kind of psychological portrait.
One of the most interesting characteristics of the recent works is the sense of an ‘end’ that pervades the film from the very beginning. The film of course deals with the ‘final days’ of Jesse James in so many ways but still there is a near post-apocalyptic sense here, fittingly in my view for a post-Civil War America. There is not much consciousness of ‘Reconstruction’ (even if we are not really in the ‘South’). Actually this is a point that Ray dwells on to some degree without actually naming the political process. Reconstruction in his world (or even to an extent in the Henry King film) is what engenders the founding violence that then enables the James brothers to become outlaws.
Another Western that has the theme of Confederate soldiers continuing to loot Union trains at the very end of the Civil War (this is a theme that some of the Jesse James films privilege, the idea of a Robin Hood figure who loots the ‘North’ to give to the ‘South’ or in a more specific sense tries to cripple the ‘banking’ system of the ‘new’ Union) is Rio Lobo (Hawks).
goodfella 9 October 2007
07:30:49 am
Well said on Jesse James Satyam – I’ll have to revisit some of these. Love Rio Lobo, incidentally.
On Into The Wild – I have mixed thoughts on this film. I really liked it as a travelogue on the American landscape, but as a character piece it felt strangely OVERdeveloped, striking some of the same notes over and over again. It develops a Buddha figure out of its central character, and grows somewhat ponderous for me. Some of the detours were amusing enough (none more so than when he encounters Vince Vaughn’s delicious character who adds juice to the proceedings, and Hal Holbrook who reaches depths that the film often doesn’t) but for the most part I felt like there was a lot of unearned and overblown spiritual and intellectual revelations here. And speaking of Malick influences, this film is covered in them, and not always with the best of results.
satyam 9 October 2007
07:55:36 am
That’s a fair critique of the film Goodfella.. I suppose it could also be said that the film is ultimately unsure about whether the protagonist’s spirituality which seems truly nihilistic in many ways is really something admirable or not. It seems to be more focussed initially to the extent that it emerges from a critique of consumerism. On the other hand this quickly morphs into a total disavowal of all ‘human society’ (I mean this phrase in the current and also in the Victorian sense!) and human institutions. Towards the end the film delves into more conservative critiques of the protagonist’s choices. And finally there is the sense that the shunning of human company is perhaps a mistake. So he is a kind of ‘Buddha’ character who eventually learns the error of his ways. It’s perhaps not a bad critique of the road tradition in America or even the whole spectrum of pop-Zen manias! But I do agree that there might be a confusion in the film in this sense.
I guess I ultimately liked the movie more than you did. Perhaps the road movie aspect of it overcame these other problems for me. But certainly your points are valid ones.
satyam 9 October 2007
07:56:20 am
“And speaking of Malick influences, this film is covered in them, and not always with the best of results.”
Quite true..
satyam 11 October 2007
10:39:47 pm
And here’s Denby echoing many of your thoughts:
“Sean Penn’s “Into the Wild” is certainly visual—it’s entirely too visual, to the point of being cheaply lyrical. Penn can’t stop swirling around mountaintops, as if he were selling S.U.V.s, and he pads this hundred-and-forty-minute movie with slow-motion episodes and other cinematographic divertissements. The hyperactive camera style is bizarrely mismatched to the movie’s subject, which is one of single-minded asceticism and spiritual purity. Penn has adapted Jon Krakauer’s chastely written 1996 book about Christopher Johnson McCandless, an Emory graduate who, at the age of twenty-two, gave away his savings and cut all ties with his family. He tramped around the country and then, determined to live outside any social structure, and without friendship or love, he headed north to the Alaskan wilderness, where he died, alone, in August, 1992. Krakauer defends McCandless against the accusations of arrogance and incompetence levelled by experienced hunters and explorers. The boy, he insists, made mistakes and had bad luck, but he was no different from thousands of other young seekers of the solitary sublime.
Penn, who wrote the screenplay, follows that celebratory line—his hero dies happily, facing the sun. But, to Penn’s credit, he doesn’t disguise the unconscious cruelty in McCandless’s quest. Emile Hirsch, who plays McCandless, is handsome, with an open smile, and he makes the reckless adventurer alert and friendly and attractive to everyone he meets. The movie begins with McCandless saying good-bye to the last person he will ever see and beginning his struggle against starvation in Alaska, and then cuts back to his wanderings, and becomes a kind of journey among forgotten American subcultures. A South Dakota wheat farmer (Vince Vaughn, playing it straight), an aging hippie (Catherine Keener), and a retired Army man living on the edge of the California desert (Hal Holbrook) all grow fond of Chris and ask him to put down his backpack and stay. They are, in effect, offering themselves as surrogate parents, but he always takes off, leaving them bereft—they sense what’s happening to him.
It’s possible to appreciate the implacability of this boy’s revolt without taking it as seriously as Krakauer and Penn do. McCandless rejects not only family and bourgeois life but also sensual life, and he’s incapable of sustaining an interest in anyone outside himself. The movie makes it clear that he has been heavily influenced by Tolstoy’s later writings, but apparently no one told him that Tolstoy, a Russian aristocrat and a soldier, renounced worldly pleasures only after a tremendous career on horseback, in bed, and at his writing table. Penn re-creates McCandless as a literal-minded saint who lives off the land and produces nothing but his own beatitude. He hasn’t experienced enough of life for his rejection of it to carry much weight, and Penn can’t see the egocentricity in a revolt that is as naïve as it is grandly self-destructive. ♦ “
satyam 17 October 2007
11:25:18 am
By the way two other interesting takes on Jesse James are the Long Riders and Great Northern Minnesota Raid.
satyam 19 October 2007
11:20:36 am
Long Riders is the more Altmanesque work though not one that I am especially fond of. Great Northfield Minnesota Raid is a strong work though with a somewhat over the top Duvall performance (as Jesse James). he makes the character psychotic and of course in the present Jesse James work both Jesse and Bob Ford are psychotic in different ways. In the Great Northfield… the narrative also becomes one about corporate interests (represented by the railroad) forcibly dispossessing people and gangs like the James one forming as a reaction. Of course this point is also hinted upon to various degrees in the earlier works, most obviously in the Ray.
henry 20 October 2007
08:54:28 am
Guys, I also saw Into the Wild recently and simply loved it. Here is my review of the film. It’s certainly not as eloquent as the thoughts you have expressed here.
http://www.naachgaana.com/2007.....-the-wild/
Qalandar 29 July 2008
07:25:42 am
Re-visited this thread after watching Jesse James recently, excellent discussion all around. I have yet to see Into the Wild…