Dead Man, 1995
Dead Man
Dead Man is Jim Jarmusch’s take on the western genre. But the dead man of the film is more the genre itself than Johnny Depp’s character. Dead Man’s point is that everything there is to tell about westerns has already been told. Consequently, Jarmusch approaches the western genre as an outsider – as if he does not know its codes at all. But the magic about Dead Man is that by learning these rules anew, the western, for a last time, becomes alive again (Andreas Kilb). Hunted by hired killers, William Blake (Johnny Depp) has no destination on his westward journey towards death. Not any of the characters he meets will have survived, when the movie ends. In Dead Man, everybody is doomed. Nothing makes sense. And the western genre’s journey has come to a closure as well when Blake is devoured by the Pacific Ocean as the final credits roll over the screen. One remark character Nobody (Gary Farmer) makes about Blake’s destiny is also true for the western itself. Like the film’s protagonist, the genre has to go “back to the place where all the spirits came from. And where all the spirits return. This world will no longer concern [it].”
One of the many highlights of Dead Man is the soundtrack by Neil Young. Young’s music is an acoustic counterpoint to the film’s stunning black and white photography. It reproduces Jarmusch’s innocent-organic, naïve and authentic approach to the western genre in a seemingly natural, arbitrary, distorted and fractured but sublime sound. Dead Man is the perfect echo of all the hopes for a better future the American West once stood for. | Heiko Stang
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Runtime: 121
Director: Jim Jarmusch Cast: Johnny Depp |
Dead Man, 1995
|
Dead Man
Dead Man is Jim Jarmusch’s take on the western genre. But the dead man of the film is more the genre itself than Johnny Depp’s character. Dead Man’s point is that everything there is to tell about westerns has already been told. Consequently, Jarmusch approaches the western genre as an outsider – as if he does not know its codes at all. But the magic about Dead Man is that by learning these rules anew, the western, for a last time, becomes alive again (Andreas Kilb). Hunted by hired killers, William Blake (Johnny Depp) has no destination on his westward journey towards death. Not any of the characters he meets will have survived, when the movie ends. In Dead Man, everybody is doomed. Nothing makes sense. And the western genre’s journey has come to a closure as well when Blake is devoured by the Pacific Ocean as the final credits roll over the screen. One remark character Nobody (Gary Farmer) makes about Blake’s destiny is also true for the western itself. Like the film’s protagonist, the genre has to go “back to the place where all the spirits came from. And where all the spirits return. This world will no longer concern [it].”
One of the many highlights of Dead Man is the soundtrack by Neil Young. Young’s music is an acoustic counterpoint to the film’s stunning black and white photography. It reproduces Jarmusch’s innocent-organic, naïve and authentic approach to the western genre in a seemingly natural, arbitrary, distorted and fractured but sublime sound. Dead Man is the perfect echo of all the hopes for a better future the American West once stood for. | Heiko Stang