DEAD MAN
A film review by Ben Combee
Copyright 1996 Ben Combee
Jim Jarmusch makes movies. He makes art films. He explores concepts, and he usually does a competent job.
I saw _Mystery Train_ about two years ago and found it interesting, but not too special. _Night on Earth_ sits on my video shelf, but I never found time to watch it.
This evening, I went with my friend John Oakley to see _Dead Man_, Jarmusch's take on the American western. It was playing in the Egyptian room at the Dobie. We got good seats, I MSTed the slide show, and after a couple of previews, the film started.
First thing: it is in black and white. This was a plus. Jarmusch's lighting and composition were perfect for the monochrome medium.
Second thing: it stars Johnny Depp. Mr. Depp always seems to do excellent in B&W films. _Ed Wood_ was the most recent example. In _Dead Man_, he plays William Blake, an accountant from Cleveland. He plays the character well, showing real emotional growth.
The title is quite appropriate, although a plural form might have been better. There are many deaths in the film, most from bullet wounds. Almost every major character dies. Shakespeare did it, so why change the formula?
Two elements of the film really grabbed me. One was Jarmusch's use of fade-to-black to represent the passage of time. These fades were frequently and consistently used, and they produced a neat, unifying effect. During the occasional recollection scenes, he negated the fade, going to white to indicate a memory.
The second element was the dialogue. The first half of the film was quite dialogue heavy. While not exactly Tarentinoesque, the conversations reminded me of a Western _Pulp Fiction_. There were some very funny lines. The second half wasn't as colorful and the conversations were scarce, mainly due to the lack of characters. It became more abstract and surreal, but still poignant.
This is an important film. It ranks very highly on my list of films for 1996, up there with _Fargo_ and _My Flower of the Secret_.
On the Combee scale of [-4..+4], it gets a +4.
--
Benjamin L. Combee (combee@techwood.org)
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