Monday Movie Review: Dead Man

Dead Man (1995) 5/10
Accountant William Blake (Johnny Depp) travels out West for a job as an accountant. Arriving in the dirty mining town of Machine, he finds the job has been given away and he is lost and bereft. Soon, he has been shot and, accused of murder, is running from the law. Directed by Jim Jarmusch.

Most of Dead Man takes place after Depp’s character is on the run. He quickly meets an Indian named Nobody (Gary Farmer), who tries to remove the bullet with crude surgery, but it is too near the heart. Nobody believes that Blake is the poet William Blake, and frequently quotes his poetry back to him. Meanwhile, a trio of gunmen have been hired to bring Blake back dead or alive, and Wanted posters put others on the trail as well.

The many Blake references let the viewer with even a small knowledge of the subject know that this is an allegorical film, and that Depp’s Blake is on a mystical journey, with Nobody as his guide (plus, well, there’s the names). It would probably take a great deal of knowledge of Blake to understand all the references, and I lack that. But, so do most people.

I took a peek at the IMDb message board for this movie, which, after the nature of IMDb movie boards, is fiercely divided among those who think the movie is crap and those who think it’s the best thing they’ve ever seen. Most of the pro camp cites the mystical meaning of it all. But I don’t think saying “this film had allegorical meaning” is the equivalent of saying “this is a great film,” as a lot of young fans seem to. Thought went into it, cool, but what is that thought, and what is it saying, and how is it being said?

Upon arriving in Machine, one of the first things that Blake sees is a woman giving a man a blow job while he holds a gun to her head. It is explicit (albeit entirely clothed), ugly, and kind of terrifying. As the movie progresses, we will witness cannibalism, corpse desecration, and, of course, murder. We will meet the insane, the deranged, and the psychopathic in double digits. We will be told stories of slavery, incest, and exile. While the nature photography is beautiful, it is contrasted with the worst human ugliness possible. Some of it is done with dark humor, and sometimes I laughed. Often, I was simply repulsed, and found the movie hard to watch.

The movie is episodic; each scene ends with a quick fade to black before the next scene opens, like short chapters. There's a frustrating tendency to introduce interesting characters played by interesting actors, and have them dead by the end of their first scene. It's like a series of cameos, and I found it irritating.

To a certain extent, I felt like Jarmusch was telling the viewers they shouldn’t like Westerns, that any love of Western iconography was love of a lie; Here, he seemed to say, was what it was really like, and you’re an ass if you think otherwise. But I don’t think that people in the Old West actually did kill and eat each other all that often, and I think the vile ugliness depicted is as much a lie as the prettied-up John Wayne version. Mostly, I resent being bludgeoned with the ugliness, as if I hadn’t got the point.

Finally, Blake’s vision quest just isn’t that beautiful. The descent into hell, in mythology, is balanced by arising into a vision of wholeness and glory. Blake is the Dead Man, journeying with his guide towards…something. But in the end, the beauty of that something isn’t all that much of a payoff, and Jarmusch can’t resist one more shot of ugliness before the credits roll.

(Cross-post, cross-post, burning bright)