One movie I watched by accident changed my view of movies and art. I was on a Western binge, and was renting every Western I could watch. So I stumbled on Dead Man. I had never heard of Jim Jarmusch before I watched it.
This movie made me realize that movies are the premier art form of the modern era. Civilization's most important contribution in the modern age are movies like Dead Man. Once you see this movie, you're not the same person you were. From the first few moments of this movie to the last, I was mesmerized.
I went to college in New Mexico, and the opening sequence where Blake (played by Johnny Depp who now has my respect forever) was very much like how New Mexico (at least when I first went out there in the 70's) was a totally different planet from the East Coast where I was born and raised. It was as much a part of my education being in New Mexico as it was attending the unusual college I went to.
For most of the movie, Blake is dying because a bullet has lodged near his heart. He befriends a Native American named "Nobody". Gary Farmer is brilliant as Nobody. Blake slowly is transformed from a mild-mannered East Coast accountant into a killer. What this movie shows is the horror and wilderness that underlies the sophistication of the mere veneer of civilization. This veneer is stripped away in the opening sequences as Blake travels out West.
Blake arrives in "Machine", a town conjured from the sordid depths of the unconscious. Robert Mitchum (in one of his last roles) chomps scenery and cigars as the owner of Machine's metalworks company where Blake seeks employ. An incredible aspect of this movie is the soundtrack by none other than Neil Young. Young plays solo electric guitar as the soundtrack, and it's worth it all just to hear Neil's guitar. And yes, this film is entirely in Black and White. I'm not sure why, but it works.
While watching this movie, I was amazed I'd never heard of it, and that I managed to stumble on it pretty much by accident. This is because Jim Jarmusch, the film's director, is shunned by Hollywood and regular distribution channels because he insists on being his own man. He's more well known now, many movies later though. After this, I went out and watched every Jarmusch movie there was. While some are damn good- Ghost Dog is a howl- I feel sad for Jarmusch because I don't see how he'll ever top Dead Man. I am not one of the admirers of Patterson, sorry it was boring.
If you've never seen Dead Man, by all means see it. Be warned- it's not for the squeamish. If you don't like Westerns, give it a try anyway, as it's not your average Western. I don't see why this movie isn't more well known.
...those who have made the journey with, and through, Dead Man will know that it offers a sublime poetic experience like few others in our jaded contemporary culture.
--- Gino Moliterno, Convener of Film Studies at The Australian National University
In a way, Dead Man grows out of a horrified view of industrialized America compatible with the apocalyptic visions of both Blake and William S. Burroughs, superimposed over an image of the American west haunted by the massive slaughter of Native Americans. And because it confounds much of our mythology about the western-- reversing some of its philosophical presuppositions by associating a westward journey with death rather than rebirth, for example, and with pessimism rather than hope--a fair number of Americans aren't ready for it. Dead Man implicitly rejects the current staples of commercial filmmaking--the feel-good slaughterfests of Woo and Tarantino, the affectless formalism and callow merchandising of MTV, the plot-driven buddy movie- choosing instead to meditate on the relation of death to the natural world. In more ways than one Dead Man can be seen as the fulfillment of a cherished counterculture dream, the acid western... Dead Man formulat(es) a chilling, savage frontier poetry to justify its hallucinated agenda-- a view at once clear-eyed and visionary, exalted and laconic, moral and unsentimental, witty and beautiful, frightening and placid.
--- Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
Some are born to sweet delight; some are born to endless night.
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