I'm just wondering if the historical Robert Ford really was obsessed with Jesse James or was this included in the film for dramatic effect? I've tried to read up about it but can't find any references.
I'm wondering if the modern obsession with fame existed back then. There also seem to be some parallels to the murder of John Lennon and perhaps the script was a nod to that famous event which is probably the nearest modern equivalent.
Tenuous link, but I recently visited Roman ruins in Bath (UK) and back in those days, in the sauna/hot room part of communal baths people would have oil smeared on their bodies and scraped off with metal tools and folks would commonly take the dirty, used oil to apply to themselves in the hopes of taking on the qualities of the most successful and famous people in their society. Obsession with fame (and before fame, power, which I guess is what fame is nowadays) has always existed. The time of Jesse James was when celebrity as we know it really began though. Clearly people then were obsessed with Jesse or his legacy would not live on as it does. And as we have evidence.
I can't say for certain the level of Bob's admiration for Jesse, but he lived in the same place and would have had access to all of the stories about Jesse as a child. Information seems to suggest Bob did admire Jesse and though the film is based on a novel, Ron Hansen's novel is based on historical facts, not just entirely invented.
It seems to me there is very little information about Bob out there though. Jesse's murder succeeded in reducing Bob's life to a single event: a sorrowful point of the film, really, I think.
I don't know much (nothing really to be honest even though I live in Liverpool, UK, haha! Ahem! Oh well.) about John Lennon's murder, but I suppose there are parallels but also vast differences since Bob actually knew Jesse.
Thanks for your reply Spiral_Static. I'm a big Lennon fan so I know a lot about that. Mark Chapman his murderer actually checked into hotels and signed in using Lennon's name so there is that similarity with the Ford character in the film in that he fantasised about being him. He also made contact and got an autograph from Lennon hours before he shot him
shareWow, I didn't know this. In this case I would definitely say there's no intended relation with this film though. This film is really Robert Ford's story and in my opinion it takes pains to convey that there isn't anything psychologically amiss with Bob which going by what you say here, clearly is not the case with Mark Chapman. Jesse James has psychological issues, but not (in the film's case) Bob, I would say anyway.
Only going by the film, but Bob idolised Jesse as a child, and he retains this innocent, sort of childlike admiration for Jesse. I don't think he loses his childhood love for Jesse entirely even as he discovers the real Jesse isn't like this and comes to simultaneously despise him, or even when he at last is in the position of killing Jesse.
But Bob doesn't kill Jesse because of some dangerous obsession or a misguided/incorrect sense of what he's doing. Practically, Jesse would have easily killed Bob and Charley sooner rather than later had Bob not killed him; Bob does it for the reward money too... and yes, he is disillusioned with the real Jesse and thinks by killing him (quite realistically, as at the time, Jesse was no longer seen as the hero by the public) thinks he may gain fame and his own notoriety and I guess become 'Jesse James' mk II himself. And, he did, for a time.