Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch, 1995): Class Handout
The independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch had long harboured the project that became Dead Man: in the 1980s the project evolved as a proposed collaboration between Jarmusch and screenwriter/novelist Rudy Wurlitzer; had the film been made at that point, it would have starred singer Tom Waits.
However, Jarmusch and Wurlitzer parted company, and in 1994 Jarmusch began shooting Dead Man with Johnny Depp in the lead role.
Wurlitzer's association with the project is important: during the 1970s, Wurlitzer was involved in a number of films that deconstructed the Western genre, taking the genre's 'inner form' (its themes and motifs) apart and critically investigating the values on which the traditional Western was based. Key among these 'revisionist Westerns' was Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), in which
Peckinpah and Wurlitzer presented the West as a place without honour, stripped bare by the demands of a capitalism which dictates that Sheriff Pat Garrett (James Coburn) hunt down and kill his former friend, Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofersson). In the restored director's cut released theatrically in 1989, at the end of the film Garrett meets his own death at the hands of his deputies, who are working for Chisum, Garrett's former employer.
Dead Man provides an ironic critique of many of the conventions of the traditional Western. Chief among these is the journey westwards (from the Eastern seaboard), which in traditional Westerns is seen as a journey back to innocence. In Dead Man, the journey westwards is a journey towards death: William Blake (Johnny Depp) is mortally wounded at the start of the film, and is, as his Native American companion Nobody refers to him, a 'dead man'. Blake's death is certain, and his movement to the West signifies his movement towards his fate.
Blake is wounded after travelling to a town called Machine in search of a job as an accountant. Upon finding that there are no vacancies, Blake wanders into a saloon spends his remaining money on a bottle of whisky; leaving the saloon, he encounters Thel (Mili Avital), a former prostitute. Blake accompanies Thel to her home, where Thel and Blake are confronted by Thel's former fiance (Gabriel Byrne), who shoots Thel and mortally wounds Blake before Blake kills him.
Escaping on horseback from Machine, Blake encounters a Native American outcast, Nobody (played by the Native American filmmaker Gary Farmer) who confuses Blake with his namesake, the English poet. The rest of the film documents Blake and Nobody's movement West as they are tracked by both Pinkerton men and bounty killers hired by Thel's fiance's father (Robert Mitchum), including Cole Wilson (Lance Henriksen) who reputedly ate his own parents.
One of the most striking things about Dead Man is its structure: in his monograph on the film, Jonathan Rosenbaum likens the movie to a poem in that its structure is built around a series of rhyming scenes, the closing scenes (involving Blake's movement into a Native American village and his journey in a canoe) mirroring the opening scenes (Blake's journey on a train, and his movement into the town of Machine). Each of the film's scenes ends with a fade out, which is unusual for a mainstream American movie and gives the impression that each scene is an isolated 'piece', like the stanza of a poem.
Another striking element of Dead Man is its savage critique of American capitalism and its impact on Native American culture: Jarmusch claimed that he made the film with a Native American audience in mind, and consciously wished to correct the stereotypes of Native American culture usually associated with the Western genre. In the character of Nobody, he avoids the 'noble savage' stereotype of Native Americans which tends to dominate most liberal Westerns. Additionally, as Kent Jones has noted, the film presents an absence of culture, the Native American culture having been largely destroyed by the growth of capitalism: 'In Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man, there is no American West. There is only a landscape that America the conqueror has emptied of its natives and turned into a capitalist charnel house' (quoted in Rosenbaum, 2000: 18).
The film is also about isolation: both Blake and Nobody are isolated from their respective cultures: as Jarmusch has stated, 'I wanted to take that simple story, and the relationship between these two guys from completely different cultures who are both loners and lost and for whatever reasons are completely disoriented from their cultures' (quoted in Rosenbaum, op cit: 32).
The film's use of violence also challenges the conventions of the Western: when violence takes place in Dead Man, it is clumsy and abrupt, the perpetrators of violence seemingly lacking the 'skill' associated with the gunslingers to be found in the classic Western. 'In Dead Man, it's probably not all that unrealistic, because boom! gun goes off and guys get hit with metal and fall down like puppets with strings getting cut—which is kind of what we wanted it to feel like, shocking for a brief moment and then very still. Someone's soul got taken' (Jarmusch, quoted in Rosenbaum, op cit: 39).
The music score for Dead Man was created by Neil Young; it is one of the finest music scores of 1990s cinema. In 1999 respected cultural critic Greil Marcus wrote an article for the online journal Salon entitled 'Here are 10 reasons why "Dead Man" is the best movie of the end of the 20th century'. In the article, he also provided '[t]en reasons why Neil Young's Dead Man is the best music for the dog days of the 20th century' (Marcus, 1999: np). Marcus states that
[f]or a film set more than a century ago, an electric guitar, playing a modal melody, surrounded by nothing, sounds older than anything you see on the screen [....] The music, as you listen, separates from the movie even as it frames scenes, banter, recitals. It gets bigger and more abstract, and it becomes hard to understand how any film, showing people doing this or that in specific, non-abstract ways, could hold it (ibid.)
Bibliography:
Marcus, Greil, 1999: 'Here are 10 reasons why "Dead Man" is the
best movie of the end of the 20th century'. [Online] http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/1999/12/02/deadman/ (accessed June 2005)
Rosenbaum, Jonathan, 2000: BFI Modern Classics: 'Dead Man'. London: British Film Institute
Whilst watching the film, consider:
1.What are the conventions (in terms of inner and outer form) that you associated with the Western genre?
2.To what extent does Dead Man either follow these conventions or challenge them?
3.What significance does the poetry of William Blake have for the film?
4.To what extent is William Blake (the character played by Johnny Depp) a 'blank canvas' for whom other characters construct an identity?
5.What could you say about the film's representation of Native American culture?
6.What could you say about the film's representation of violence?
However, Jarmusch and Wurlitzer parted company, and in 1994 Jarmusch began shooting Dead Man with Johnny Depp in the lead role.
Wurlitzer's association with the project is important: during the 1970s, Wurlitzer was involved in a number of films that deconstructed the Western genre, taking the genre's 'inner form' (its themes and motifs) apart and critically investigating the values on which the traditional Western was based. Key among these 'revisionist Westerns' was Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), in which
Peckinpah and Wurlitzer presented the West as a place without honour, stripped bare by the demands of a capitalism which dictates that Sheriff Pat Garrett (James Coburn) hunt down and kill his former friend, Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofersson). In the restored director's cut released theatrically in 1989, at the end of the film Garrett meets his own death at the hands of his deputies, who are working for Chisum, Garrett's former employer.Dead Man provides an ironic critique of many of the conventions of the traditional Western. Chief among these is the journey westwards (from the Eastern seaboard), which in traditional Westerns is seen as a journey back to innocence. In Dead Man, the journey westwards is a journey towards death: William Blake (Johnny Depp) is mortally wounded at the start of the film, and is, as his Native American companion Nobody refers to him, a 'dead man'. Blake's death is certain, and his movement to the West signifies his movement towards his fate.
Blake is wounded after travelling to a town called Machine in search of a job as an accountant. Upon finding that there are no vacancies, Blake wanders into a saloon spends his remaining money on a bottle of whisky; leaving the saloon, he encounters Thel (Mili Avital), a former prostitute. Blake accompanies Thel to her home, where Thel and Blake are confronted by Thel's former fiance (Gabriel Byrne), who shoots Thel and mortally wounds Blake before Blake kills him.
Escaping on horseback from Machine, Blake encounters a Native American outcast, Nobody (played by the Native American filmmaker Gary Farmer) who confuses Blake with his namesake, the English poet. The rest of the film documents Blake and Nobody's movement West as they are tracked by both Pinkerton men and bounty killers hired by Thel's fiance's father (Robert Mitchum), including Cole Wilson (Lance Henriksen) who reputedly ate his own parents.
One of the most striking things about Dead Man is its structure: in his monograph on the film, Jonathan Rosenbaum likens the movie to a poem in that its structure is built around a series of rhyming scenes, the closing scenes (involving Blake's movement into a Native American village and his journey in a canoe) mirroring the opening scenes (Blake's journey on a train, and his movement into the town of Machine). Each of the film's scenes ends with a fade out, which is unusual for a mainstream American movie and gives the impression that each scene is an isolated 'piece', like the stanza of a poem.
Another striking element of Dead Man is its savage critique of American capitalism and its impact on Native American culture: Jarmusch claimed that he made the film with a Native American audience in mind, and consciously wished to correct the stereotypes of Native American culture usually associated with the Western genre. In the character of Nobody, he avoids the 'noble savage' stereotype of Native Americans which tends to dominate most liberal Westerns. Additionally, as Kent Jones has noted, the film presents an absence of culture, the Native American culture having been largely destroyed by the growth of capitalism: 'In Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man, there is no American West. There is only a landscape that America the conqueror has emptied of its natives and turned into a capitalist charnel house' (quoted in Rosenbaum, 2000: 18).
The film is also about isolation: both Blake and Nobody are isolated from their respective cultures: as Jarmusch has stated, 'I wanted to take that simple story, and the relationship between these two guys from completely different cultures who are both loners and lost and for whatever reasons are completely disoriented from their cultures' (quoted in Rosenbaum, op cit: 32).
The film's use of violence also challenges the conventions of the Western: when violence takes place in Dead Man, it is clumsy and abrupt, the perpetrators of violence seemingly lacking the 'skill' associated with the gunslingers to be found in the classic Western. 'In Dead Man, it's probably not all that unrealistic, because boom! gun goes off and guys get hit with metal and fall down like puppets with strings getting cut—which is kind of what we wanted it to feel like, shocking for a brief moment and then very still. Someone's soul got taken' (Jarmusch, quoted in Rosenbaum, op cit: 39).
The music score for Dead Man was created by Neil Young; it is one of the finest music scores of 1990s cinema. In 1999 respected cultural critic Greil Marcus wrote an article for the online journal Salon entitled 'Here are 10 reasons why "Dead Man" is the best movie of the end of the 20th century'. In the article, he also provided '[t]en reasons why Neil Young's Dead Man is the best music for the dog days of the 20th century' (Marcus, 1999: np). Marcus states that
[f]or a film set more than a century ago, an electric guitar, playing a modal melody, surrounded by nothing, sounds older than anything you see on the screen [....] The music, as you listen, separates from the movie even as it frames scenes, banter, recitals. It gets bigger and more abstract, and it becomes hard to understand how any film, showing people doing this or that in specific, non-abstract ways, could hold it (ibid.)
Bibliography:
Marcus, Greil, 1999: 'Here are 10 reasons why "Dead Man" is the
best movie of the end of the 20th century'. [Online] http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/1999/12/02/deadman/ (accessed June 2005)
Rosenbaum, Jonathan, 2000: BFI Modern Classics: 'Dead Man'. London: British Film Institute
Whilst watching the film, consider:
1.What are the conventions (in terms of inner and outer form) that you associated with the Western genre?
2.To what extent does Dead Man either follow these conventions or challenge them?
3.What significance does the poetry of William Blake have for the film?
4.To what extent is William Blake (the character played by Johnny Depp) a 'blank canvas' for whom other characters construct an identity?
5.What could you say about the film's representation of Native American culture?
6.What could you say about the film's representation of violence?
©Paul Andrew Julian Lewis, 2005
posted by Paul A J Lewis at 5:11 am
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