The Assasination of Jesse James and the Victims of Violence in Northern Ireland

I read this book many years ago and was deeply affected by it. The memory is still vivid of the writing in chapter 1 in which Ron Hansen takes a whole chapter to describe James inside and out. Brilliant. And Hansen has remained one of those writers whose every work I devour. And the fact that he has a very thoughtful and active faith is an added bonus. Indeed all his novels have a very strong moral framework.

And anybody interested in the connection between faith and fiction could do worse than read A Stay Against Confusion: Essays on Faith and Fiction.

As a reader of fiction I’m not always happy to hear that a favourite novel is being made into a film. Very rarely does the cinema experience match the reading. So I was nervous about this one, but there was no need.

It is BRILLIANT.


The cinematography is gorgeous, lots of cold stark lansdcapes, lots of lingering shots  and contrasting colours. Brad Pitt is stunningly frightening as the violent, unpredictable thug Jesse James coming to the end of his career. Casey Affleck is thoroughly repulsive as the Jesse James wannabe Robert Ford whose fawning regard for James is corrupted into murder by the outlaw’s callous disregard. The levels of tension and fear are sustained throughout and heightened by the capacity of the filmaker to take his time. The scenes round dinner tables are feats of endurance in their horror.

In the end we are brought face to face with the dark side of our culture’s fascination with celebrity.

Rather than prattle on endlessly I’ll recall one scene towards the end. Ford is taking a train journey wondering how he goes on after the death of James and the turning sour of his notoriety. He imagines visiting all the families who were bereaved by the violence of Jesse James. The names of wives and children are mentioned and the camera moves around the carriage  lingering on the despair-creased faces of victims of violence.

Watching it I was brought up short by the realisation that  for all the dark fascination our culture has with violence, the victims are real flesh and blood people.

I’ve moved about enough in Northern Ireland and have met those who have done unspeakably violent things. I have been long enough in their presence to know there is  a  dark fascination there.

Powerfully violent men have the gravitational pull of a black hole

And in a context like Northern Ireland that pull often exerts itself strongest on those who could never see themselves capable of the same crimes.  I have seen middle class respectable people go all giggly in the presence of some of NI’s most notorious killers.

But all of their victims have a face. Those who live daily with the effects of their violence have a face. And as we move, haltingly, from a violent past, and the depths of the pain we caused one another is now being sounded we need to acknowledge those faces. This is THE political task of the day.