Here we have two decidedly different movies, with no real common thread other than that they happened to come in the mail at the same time. Normally these two movies would probably have almost nothing to do with each other but watching these two movies so close to each other highlighted some peculiar similarities that are definitely worth exploring.

Looking at the first piece, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford we find a interesting modern western movie. Set around the death of Jesse James this movie is mostly character driven, set in and around the lives of the main players, rather than trying to tell us some grand overarching story. Romulus, My Father is similar in this regard. It is a simple story with only a few main characters which looks to highlight the relationship between a father and son. It employs a efficient form of storytelling, using dialogue sparingly and letting the strong acting carry the narrative.

Although both of these movies are trying to reach a similar goal, they go about it in markedly different ways. Romulus is stripped back, subtle and simple. It doesn’t try to overwhelm the viewer with sentimentalism or a message, it just tries to outline a basic story of a father and son, and leave actors to go from there. The massive amounts of emotion that come from this film are in fact driven almost completely by the acting of the two main actors. The script in and of itself is actually fairly simple. There are no long pieces of dialogue to bog down the emotion impact of the imagery and acting.

Jesse James on the other hand suffers from the exact opposite of this. Where Romulus has a stripped back simple script, Jesse James is dialogue and exposition heavy. The dialogue is incredibly well crafted, with impeccable acting from all of the main players, especially the actor that plays Robert Ford. However, the writers felt it necessary to try and put in quite a bit of context and back story to the piece. This would not necessarily be a problem, but the script was not quite strong enough for the historical and contextual information to be put in the dialogue so instead it delivered by a jarring, out of place voice over.

Now voice-overs are not by their nature a bad thing, they in fact can be put to very good use. It could probably even be excused if the information that was being relayed was actually necessary, but it really is not needed in the piece. The main focus should really be on the characters, specifically the title characters, and the constant narration simply gets in the way of this. This is the main reason that we can compare these two seemingly unconnected movies, Romulus handles this incredibly well. The temptation was probably there for the writers to put in a narration from the boy, now grown up to be a man, thinking back on his father and the way that he brought him up. But instead they left it to the pared back script and wonderful direction to answer any questions that the viewer might have had. You get the distinct impression that is was at least partially dumbed down to suit a mainstream audience. That is not to say that mainstream movie goers are adverse to intelligent cinema, rather that in an effort to make it appeal to as wide a audience as possible, they put in a heavy-handed narration in order to explain to everyone the context that the James Gang was working in.

Nevertheless we have here two very competent, watchable movies that deserve close attention. The Assassination of Jesse James for its incredible dialogue and acting, and Romulus also for is incredible acting, but also for the considered directing and subtle script.