When it comes to film industry legends, few are held in higher esteem than legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins.
The legendary lenser of such films as “Blade Runner 2049,” “No Country for Old Men,” “Skyfall,” “Prisoners,” “1917,” and “Sicario” is famed for his visual style, silhouettes and collaborations with directors like Sam Mendes and Denis Villeneuve.
One of Deakins’ most iconic works though is Andrew Dominik’s “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”. It’s a film considered one of the best modern interpretations of a Western, but those involved have expressed issues with the theatrical cut in the past – including Dominik himself in an interview a while back.
This week, speaking at a panel discussion via IndieWire, Deakins joined the chorus – saying he remains dissatisfied with one key sequence in the film, one of its most famous in fact.
It’s the train robbery sequence which was shot “on a museum line” in Edmonton, Canada, with Deakins saying they couldn’t find a period-accurate train to match the director’s vision:
“I’ve got to say, Andrew and I got kind of frustrated because we couldn’t really find a train line that we liked, and we couldn’t find a period train to the scale that Andrew wanted.
We ended up shooting in Edmonton [in Alberta, Canada] on a museum line, and luckily it goes through this little wooded area, but the train was really dinky. Andrew was absolutely frustrated at it.
A lot of things you do, you kind of make do with what you have. Part of the challenge was to make that train feel like a massive creature coming out of the darkness. The darkness hides a lot. I would never say I was happy with it afterwards. I was always kind of unhappy with it because it wasn’t as big as we wanted.”
Deakins used vintage lenses on the film, which starred Brad Pitt as the notorious outlaw Jesse James and Casey Affleck as his eventual assassin Robert Ford. Deakins and Affleck scored Oscar nominations for their work.
Deakins previously revealed to Collider that he hopes, one day, Criterion will release a longer version of the film that clocks in only a little bit longer but which both Deakins and Dominik consider the better film.
