Dead Man

Jim Jarmusch is one of my favorite directors, and Dead Man is probably the greatest work he has ever done. Very rarely does a film come alive with a sense of poetry. The only other film I can compare it to would be Wim Wenders' Wings Of Desire. The film moves like a dream, floating and spinning around you. Neil Young's electric score churns like a ghost train and pushes the film farther. There isn't one performance that is wrong, nor is there ever a false moment. From start to finish this film pulls you into it's dream land, and carries you along on clouds until the finish.

During my late teens and early twenties, I was taken to see many films by a friend of mine who was the son of a Persian film director.

He was never interested in what I thought of a film until we were outside the cinema but told me how to watch the film, during the film.

One of the first films I saw was Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law in the Turkish quarter of Paris with French subtitles. We sat in the front row and roared. We were the only ones. It all seemed rather lost on the rest of the audience. All the way through he told me the things to see.

Here are a few. First, Robbie Muller's cinematography. Beautiful vistas moving to the pace of the film. Paris, Texas springs to mind.

Second, the recognition of amorality in the world; a world of "nature red in tooth and claw". All of Jarmusch's films that I've seen have a "rough diamond" edge running through them. An edge where the animal response is the correct one - the place that Hitchock always alluded to but never dared go to.

Third, "incompleteness" if there is such a word. Jarmusch always leaves questions dangling; Why was Carl Perkins better than Elvis (or vice versa)? Did Eva really go back to Hungary? Is Nobody already dead? In this sense, Jarmusch is more a novelist than a film maker - he leaves much for you to fill in with your mind's eye. Quite an achievement, considering how compelling the visuals of film are.

For me, Jarmusch's daring is that he allows the viewer to fill in a lot of the context for a scene. The context, naturally, defines the scene, yet Jarmusch is bold enough to let the viewer place it later. Perhaps much later, when you've worked it out.

So when I watched dead man, I was ready. The last Johnny Depp film I'd seen was Chocolat, superb. I understood and appreciated Robbie Muller's approach and I had most of Jarmusch to date under my belt.

Two things sprang to mind with Dead Man. The first was a Sci-fi novel, written because the author was 20 something and needed the money. The second was the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

The first occurred to me because of the way I encountered it. I was researching and building eLearning systems at the time and the eLearning crowd hailed Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card as the eLearner's sci-fi novel. I read it and the basic lesson is that the training has to be so real that the student doesn't know when it's really real and, even then half thinks it's training.

The second occurred to me as a consequence of the first. The Tibetan Book of the Dead is a manual for dying and being reborn. It has options such as getting out of the wheel of incarnation altogether or doing a damage limitation exercise on how limited your capabilities are going to be in the next life - and everything in between.

One of the central premises of this yoga is that life as we know it is a simulation of the real life - a kind of Ender's game, if you will. When one sees the finite from the position of the eternal, the question of where one ends and the other begins inevitably arises and it's this that Jarmusch captures so wonderfully in Dead Man.

William Blake (the real one) had none of this knowledge that we have today but what he did have is opium. Survey the poetry of the opium-heads. They all had a sense of eternal spirit - it comes with the drug. It gives the connectedness and empathy of E with the hallucinations of A but the chilled response to it all of weed.

Like Jarmusch, Blake, Coleridge and the rest recognise the harsh reality of the nature we live in, yet are still able to celebrate its beauty and the lessons that it has to teach us.

The pace of Dead Man is that of an opium hit, one only has to take the stuff or read the Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz's Adrift on the Nile to see that. The Neil Young sound track is naturally irritating if one cannot settle down into the pace of the film. For those who understand it, it is the hypnotic metronome that keeps time for days after the film has ended.

Magical.

Dead Man is a unique piece of film. As this is my first taste of Jim Jarmusch, I had no idea of what to expect, but even if I had; I reckon that this film wouldn't have conformed to them. Dead Man is a surreal and trippy western that peels itself away from the staples of the genre and succeeds in creating something truly one-off and self-styled. Lead by a score written by Neil Young, Dead Man is continually satisfying and powerful; and you get the impression that every scene has been fully thought through, and is perfectly realised as the auteur intended. For this reason, Dead Man captivates it's viewer from the moment it starts until the moment it ends, and as it descends into full blown trippy weirdness, you can do nothing but stare in admiration of this strange gem of cult cinema. The plot is thin on the ground and it largely lacks meaning, but it doesn't matter because Dead Man is a purely aesthetic experience. Still, it follows William Blake (Johnny Depp), an accountant from Cleveland that arrives in a town to take a job offer, only to find that the vacancy has already been filled…

Dead Man is filmed in very stark black and white, which only adds to the surrealism of the story. Had this film have been done in colour, it would not have captured the same atmosphere that the black and white gives it; and so this decision was an inspired one indeed. One staple of the western genre that Jarmusch is keen to retain is the use of close-ups. The director spends a lot of time caressing Depp's facial features with his camera and, at times, even focuses on his lead actor when the action doesn't concern him. Aside from keeping in with the western tradition, this also allows Jarmusch to keep the focus on the main character, which keeps the viewer focused on his plight. For this film, Jarmusch has put together a cast of B-movie icons that will have B-movie fans foaming at the mouth. Crispin Glover, Robert Mitchum, Billy Bob Thornton, Lance Henriksen, Gabriel Byrne, John Hurt, Alfred Molina and even Iggy Pop feature and it's great to see so many faces in the same movie. The cast is, of course, lead by a man who is perhaps today's best actor; Johnny Depp. Depp's name on a credit list speaks for itself, and I don't need to tell you that his performance is great; nor do I need to point out the effortless cool that this movie exudes, largely thanks to the great man's presence. My only advice is see it...see it now.

The Western genre has always been misunderstood as a simplistic, racist (and misogynistic) traditional genre due to the many mediocre Westerns of the 40s and 50s. However, real good Westerns have delighted us with complex stories that take advantage of the setting themes: the conflict between honor & law, wilderness & civilization, and life & death. Director Jim Jarmusch, who has achieved fame and recognition in the independent film community, uses the elements of the Western genre to create his very own poetical meditation on these themes, giving the genre his personal touch crafting a powerful and original gem.

Young accountant William Blake (Johnny Depp) seems to have lost everything as his parents have died and his fianceé left him without a reason; so he decides to take a job in Machine, a town located at the end of "civilization" in the Wild Wild West. To his misfortune, the job he applied to has already been taken and now he finds himself really without nothing. However, his life will change forever after by a series of circumstances he ends up murdering a man, becoming an outlaw, although getting badly wounded in the process. Now, traveling along an outcast native who calls himself "Nobody" (Gary Farmer), he'll begin a strange and surreal trip that'll prepare him for the next stage.

Written by Jarmusch himself, the film's story details Blake's trip guided by Nobody in a similar way to Dante's journey in "The Divine Comedy", where a series of "episodes" are used to explore different ideas and themes across the trip. Jarmusch subtlety mixes drama and comedy to deliver his philosophical meditation making the film an entertaining experience, never becoming boring or tiresome. The Western setting is used effectively to tell this story and "Dead Man" toys with the Western elements in a subtle, respectful and quite entertaining way that neither parodies it nor makes fun of it in any way.

Shot entirely in black and white, the cinematography (by Jarmusch regular, Robby Müller) captures that feeling of loneliness and emptiness that William Blake's life has, as well as his collision with the wilderness of the wild west. Jarmusch camera-work together with Neil Young's excellent soundtrack give the film a beautiful surreal look that echoes Blake's equally surreal journey across the darkness searching for light. Finally, another interesting point is Jarmusch extensive care for detail in his portrayal of the American west, as well as his respect for the Native American cultures that play an important role in his film; making "Dead Man" one of the most realist Westerns ever made.

Johnny Depp's performance is remarkable, and probably one of the best in his career. Blake's complete transformation across the film is a real challenge and Depp makes the most of it. Gary Farmer is equally excellent and he is as effective in the comedy scenes as he is in the drama scenes, showing his flexibility and talent. The supporting roles present an assortment of cameos where actors such as Crispin Glover, Lance Henriksen, John Hurt and Robert Mitchum (in his last role) appear giving outstanding performances despite the limited screen time they receive. Henriksen certainly delivers his best performance in years.

Jarmusch's film is a brilliant poetical meditation of life and death, but its episodic nature make it feel even more slow than it is, as every vignette is separated by fade outs that break the mood created. This really damages the film's atmosphere, as it feels as a forced wake up after a pleasant dream. Another problem, is that fans expecting an action-filled Western may end up disappointed, so bear in mind that this film is more about feelings rather than actions. Despite his minor problems, the film is still a very enjoyable experience and a whole new way to experience Westerns, so even non-fans of the genre will appreciate it.

To summarize, "Dead Man" is an atypical look at Westerns that presents Jarmusch's interesting views on life and death in an entertaining, attractive way. Among the revisionist westerns, "Dead Man" is a valuable gem that is worth a watch. Even non-fans of the genre will find something interesting in it. 9/10

First of all, you have to be a Jarmusch fan. If you walk comfortably through that door, you'll find he does a bang-up job with this existential Western. So does Johnny Depp, who plays the lead--a lost unemployed accountant in the old west who happens to be named William Blake. Gary Farmer, the Indian from Ghost Dog and The Score, calls himself Nobody because he doesn't like his given name that means "one who talks much and says nothing." Nobody serves as William Blake's savior, doctor, guide and boatman "across the river." Neil Young wrote and performed the score. Blake's nemesis is played by Lance Henriksen as a terse cannibalistic bounty hunter. Delightful cameos include Robert Mitchum, Crispin Glover, Gabriel Byrne, John Heard and others.

Symbolism abounds--there are shooting stars, down-shots of a hellish factory where Blake wanders looking for a way out, mines and factories of "white-man's metal," plenty of dead animals, including a small doe that Depp lies down with after decorating his face with its blood.

But the movie doesn't fall into the trap of making white men the fall guys for everything wrong with the world in which Blake and Nobody try to make a living. Nobody mistreats Blake's bullet wound and is arguably responsible for his ultimate predicament. Nobody isn't worldly, despite having seen Europe in his youth. He believes the same white people were in every town he visited. The northwest tribe visited at the end were petty people who obviously thought Blake and Nobody were not worth their attention, evidenced by Nobody's imprecations to "walk proud" to the mortally-wounded Blake, and his nervousness at what might happen if he didn't. And of course, there is Nobody's innocent belief that the hapless accountant is the historical poet and artist.

Held together with Young's musical score--mixed a tad loud for my taste--and the deterioration of the finances and health of William Blake, Dead Man is more than a picaresque, but the overall theme is elusive. Motifs are another story, and are liberally sprinkled throughout. Perhaps that's the point, ultimately--in the face of death, nothing else matters, and all the symbols and themes add up to nothing, driving the story from existential to nihilistic. Personal friendship, religion, wealth, work, technology, tribe, humanity, God, love--all mean nothing or are actively detrimental. For a movie named "Dead Man," that's not an unreasonable interpretation.

Depp is an ideal actor to portray the reluctant gunslinger, and his personality does more to hold the film together than any other single factor. The camera loves him, and his ability to portray a variety of responses to his predicaments, from confusion, surprise and anger to amusement, disappointment and ultimately resignation is the heart of this thoroughly enjoyable film.