Dead Man
Reviewed By: Fatemeh Azimzadeh
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Writer: Jim Jarmusch
Release Date: May 1996
Country: USA
Genre: Western/Drama
Starring: Johnny Depp, Gary Farmer
Music: Neil Young
A Dead past meeting a Dead future
Plot:
William Blake, desperate of the past, hopeful to a new start and ambitious to the future, moves westward on a train. He is one month late to achieve the promised accountant job. He gets wounded by the son of his would–be boss, kills him and runs off the town. Soon prize hunters chase him. He and a Native American called Nobody come together to experience quirky affairs before their physical deaths. Both departure and destination ends up to death
Setting:
A western frontier of late 19th century, America
Genre: Western/Drama
Main Characters: Johnny Depp (William Blake), Gary Farmer (Nobody)
The techniques:
Jarmusch's black and white Dead Man creates senses of doomed and fruitless life in west, despite the beliefs which attracted people to leave everything beyond and move there in 19th century, specifically. The people look more ghostly by the black and white shots as well as the repeated motions of the camera to death suggestive objects like coffins, skulls and animal skins. It all goes with the compatible music and fade-out technique to make the atmosphere spookier.
Also, nature is black and white; it seems barren and not bountiful, it is dead as well, even the flowers are not natural.
There is no joy of colors to produce energy, eagerness and exhilaration.
Symbols and Metaphors:
Most of the scenes are symbolic and metaphorical. The names and the words of the characters and also the tone of the story and the film bring William Blake's work to mind, the English poet that was isolated from the society.
The railway system is the vessel to nourish the country by people and cargos as well as life styles. People from different groups are on sitting quiet on the train, it seems they do not have something in common to share, but guns and moving westward.
Gun talks from the beginning to the end and people understand each other through gun-related words and behaviors; they do not trust each other and are ready to shoot. Each one has his own rules. Gun is the solution.
Dickinson trusts the human hunters more than the law, but he decides to benefit from the service of law, too. It seems either he has been a hunter himself or loves hunting.
A woman is there with a gun and paper flowers.
One paper rose is attached to Blake's coat as long as he wears the suit which, he was proud of it in the beginning, but he puts the suit away as well as his watch; a dead man needs no time.
A teenager chasing Blake is not old enough to smoke, but already killed several they say.
Machine provides a good name for the town, everything is artificial, hunting and brutality exists.
Blake accompanies Nobody and that is the time he backs to the nature. Nobody niether belongs to the past or present.
Indians were those who introduced tobacco to whites, but now he is asks for tobacco. The word, tobacco carries a big part of American history on it.
At the end he does not die on the land he came to advance on it, but on the sea and under the sky, that is another world.
It is an eccentric western.
Reviewed By: Fatemeh Azimzadeh
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Writer: Jim Jarmusch
Release Date: May 1996
Country: USA
Genre: Western/Drama
Starring: Johnny Depp, Gary Farmer
Music: Neil Young
A Dead past meeting a Dead future
Plot:
William Blake, desperate of the past, hopeful to a new start and ambitious to the future, moves westward on a train. He is one month late to achieve the promised accountant job. He gets wounded by the son of his would–be boss, kills him and runs off the town. Soon prize hunters chase him. He and a Native American called Nobody come together to experience quirky affairs before their physical deaths. Both departure and destination ends up to death
Setting:
A western frontier of late 19th century, America
Genre: Western/Drama
Main Characters: Johnny Depp (William Blake), Gary Farmer (Nobody)
The techniques:
Jarmusch's black and white Dead Man creates senses of doomed and fruitless life in west, despite the beliefs which attracted people to leave everything beyond and move there in 19th century, specifically. The people look more ghostly by the black and white shots as well as the repeated motions of the camera to death suggestive objects like coffins, skulls and animal skins. It all goes with the compatible music and fade-out technique to make the atmosphere spookier.
Also, nature is black and white; it seems barren and not bountiful, it is dead as well, even the flowers are not natural.
There is no joy of colors to produce energy, eagerness and exhilaration.
Symbols and Metaphors:
Most of the scenes are symbolic and metaphorical. The names and the words of the characters and also the tone of the story and the film bring William Blake's work to mind, the English poet that was isolated from the society.
The railway system is the vessel to nourish the country by people and cargos as well as life styles. People from different groups are on sitting quiet on the train, it seems they do not have something in common to share, but guns and moving westward.
Gun talks from the beginning to the end and people understand each other through gun-related words and behaviors; they do not trust each other and are ready to shoot. Each one has his own rules. Gun is the solution.
Dickinson trusts the human hunters more than the law, but he decides to benefit from the service of law, too. It seems either he has been a hunter himself or loves hunting.
A woman is there with a gun and paper flowers.
One paper rose is attached to Blake's coat as long as he wears the suit which, he was proud of it in the beginning, but he puts the suit away as well as his watch; a dead man needs no time.
A teenager chasing Blake is not old enough to smoke, but already killed several they say.
Machine provides a good name for the town, everything is artificial, hunting and brutality exists.
Blake accompanies Nobody and that is the time he backs to the nature. Nobody niether belongs to the past or present.
Indians were those who introduced tobacco to whites, but now he is asks for tobacco. The word, tobacco carries a big part of American history on it.
At the end he does not die on the land he came to advance on it, but on the sea and under the sky, that is another world.
It is an eccentric western.
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