Jim Jarmusch’s bleak satire of the Wild West makes its way to 4K from Criterion.
Dead Man is a pitch perfect example of the pure versatility of the western genre. The ultimate American genre, westerns have been our way of mythologizing ourselves for over 200 years. Stories of a once untamed western frontier have inspired artists and captivated audiences for decades, as the form grew and shifted with audiences’ expectations, as well as against it.
Dead Man follows William Blake (Johnny Depp), a young accountant who goes to the edge of the world for employment, and to find somewhere where his crippling loneliness feels more normal. After discovering that the job doesn’t actually exist, he finds himself wandering through town, unsure of what to do next, until he bumps into a beautiful young woman. While he initially thinks his fortunes have finally changed, what he instead ends up with is a bullet inching towards his heart and an ever expanding bounty on his head, and only Nobody (Gary Farmer) can help him both prepare for this new life of outlaw living, but also prepare for his quickly approaching, inevitable death.
Dead Man sits in a very interesting space, both as a Western as well as the era it was released in. By the mid ‘90s, American culture had shifted; gone with the conservative earnestness of the ‘80s, in with the nihilistic sarcasm of the ‘90s. The movies, shows, and music had an edge, an attitude towards fighting authority, all while really just wanting to hang out and slack off. The country was bored and pissed at our parents, all while they awaited the seeming end of the world.
This is the type of milieu that Dead Man lives in. If I had to find a close approximation, I’d say that the film Dead Man most closely resembles in its mindset is Clerks; both films deal with men living adrift in their 30’s, not really sure what to do. In Clerks, it is dealing with the fact that your minimum wage job you got in high school has become your career; in Dead Man, it’s realizing that your life has ended before you’ve even realized it, walking a path to nowhere.
It is a film that carries a deeply bleak and dark sense of humor, a film about a completely broken and destitute world, filled with eccentric characters who are all their own levels of unhinged and craven, living apathetic existences of violence and mayhem. But, to them, it’s just another Tuesday. That’s the only way you can survive in a world like that of Dead Man.
Specs:
The stark black and white cinematography of Robbie Muller looks absolutely gorgeous in this newest 4K release, a restoration approved by director Jim Jarmusch, with crisp 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio to really let the soundtrack pop.
For extras, Criterion doesn’t disappoint. Within is a Q&A with director Jim Jarmusch, footage of Neil Young composing and performing the score, an interview with actor Gary Farmer, readings of William Blake’s poems by members of the cast, selected-scene audio commentary by production designer Bob Ziembicki and sound mixer Drew Kunin, deleted scenes, a trailer, color photos from the films productions, as well as an essays by film critic Amy Taubin and music journalist Ben Ratliff.
Dead Man is very much a product of its time. It’s a unique view, playing the west as a tired fable, a broken world that really isn’t worth saving, and all you can hope to do is die in peace, all while carrying a very “slackers will rule the earth” Gen X vibe throughout. It’s a tired shrug at the world as it is, and, even though it’s been over 30 years since its release, we can all agree that tired shrug never really went away.
