Dead Man ***
Jim Jarmusch, 1996
US
@ Landmark Metro
I'm not sure if it's that I've already seen it, or that I watched so many westerns in the intervening year-plus, but Dead Man seemed far better this time around. Broken Flowers improved on a second viewing as well, but not this much. I got to thinking about how a sort of slow, blank style allows for a lot of reflection within the running time of the film, perfect for a meditation on violence in the western like this. Johnny Depp's character inhabits a similar role to the viewer; he doesn't witness most of the action, because he's constantly passed out or asleep, and he's forced to make sense of the setting and action at the same time as the audience. He makes a journey both from life to death but also from disengaged to engaged, or rather from disgust to acceptance. He recoils at the long-range buffalo hunting from his traincar, and is obviously ill at ease trudging through the "mud" in his preposterous suit. His wardrobe and outlook on the environs both undergo dramatic changes; he even makes a tobacco purchase near the end, though he spends much of the movie explaining that he doesn't smoke. Crispin Glover's comment about "the waters in your head" and perspective from a boat turn prophetic toward the end of Depp's journey, which seems ultimately predestined, in an almost ridiculous fashion. Not just that he is almost constantly on the move from Lake Erie to his final berth in the sea canoe, but tidbits like Robert Mitchum's weirdly unmotivated yet obvious factory owner suggest that the action has been entirely determined even before Jarmusch wrote the thing. A bit like Pleasantville, actually, where an outsider is introduced into something of a generic story, around whom the traditional elements break down or are shown to be something other than they usually appear to be, ultimately as a deconstruction of the original myth.
See also: IMDb | Jonathan Rosenbaum's review/essay
Jim Jarmusch, 1996
US
@ Landmark Metro
I'm not sure if it's that I've already seen it, or that I watched so many westerns in the intervening year-plus, but Dead Man seemed far better this time around. Broken Flowers improved on a second viewing as well, but not this much. I got to thinking about how a sort of slow, blank style allows for a lot of reflection within the running time of the film, perfect for a meditation on violence in the western like this. Johnny Depp's character inhabits a similar role to the viewer; he doesn't witness most of the action, because he's constantly passed out or asleep, and he's forced to make sense of the setting and action at the same time as the audience. He makes a journey both from life to death but also from disengaged to engaged, or rather from disgust to acceptance. He recoils at the long-range buffalo hunting from his traincar, and is obviously ill at ease trudging through the "mud" in his preposterous suit. His wardrobe and outlook on the environs both undergo dramatic changes; he even makes a tobacco purchase near the end, though he spends much of the movie explaining that he doesn't smoke. Crispin Glover's comment about "the waters in your head" and perspective from a boat turn prophetic toward the end of Depp's journey, which seems ultimately predestined, in an almost ridiculous fashion. Not just that he is almost constantly on the move from Lake Erie to his final berth in the sea canoe, but tidbits like Robert Mitchum's weirdly unmotivated yet obvious factory owner suggest that the action has been entirely determined even before Jarmusch wrote the thing. A bit like Pleasantville, actually, where an outsider is introduced into something of a generic story, around whom the traditional elements break down or are shown to be something other than they usually appear to be, ultimately as a deconstruction of the original myth.
See also: IMDb | Jonathan Rosenbaum's review/essay
Labels: 1990s, 3 Stars, Jim Jarmusch, US
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home