Villains In The Film 'The Assassination Of Jesse James'

My thesis is about villains, and how filmmakers control what we think is evil.

I have come up with my thesis from the film ‘The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford’. In this film, Andrew Dominik, (the maker of the film), has shown how filmmakers can control what we think of a person. Dominik persuades the audience during the film that the antagonist is Robert Ford. He does this by the way he portrays the characters of both Jesse James and Robert Ford.

Andrew Dominik decided who was evil and who was good. The title leads us to believe that Jesse James is the protagonist, even before we start to watch the film. Using the title; ‘The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.' Dominik states that Robert Ford is the coward that will assassinate Jesse James. Through the title, Dominik has given us the idea that everything Jesse James does wrong, can somehow be justified. The audience will always try to see the good side of Jesse James. While with Robert it is the opposite. Everything that he does wrong causes the audience to dislike him further. All actions justifying why he is the bad guy.

At the beginning of the film, Robert Ford is a young man trying to become part of the James gang. Robert Ford idolises Jesse, from

We hear through narration that he was assassinated out of revenge for Jesse James. Dominik showed this because it was evidence of how Jesse James was loved by people, he was a figure of the public. It also proved how Robert Ford was a hated man because he killed Jesse James. It gave evidence that indeed he was the villain in Dominik’s film. Dominik also added a small narration, of how there were no photos sold, or tours of the house Robert grew up in like there were when Jesse was killed. Dominik did this to emphasise how Robert Ford was not someone people looked up to or thought of as anything other than the coward who assassinated Jesse