Dead Man (1995)
Directed by Jim Jarmusch
On the run after committing murder, an accountant encounters a strange Native American man who prepares him for his journey into the spiritual world.
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The movie begins with a brief depiction of Blake's train ride across the frontier, which is presented as a sort of homage to the 1931 version of "Dracula," another film in which a nerdy clerk travels into an exotic, timeless and deadly other world of wild mountains and forest.
It plays a little like some of Godard's experimental works, such as Pierrot le Fou.
Those films left a lot to be desired even if Ford in his masterpiece "The Searchers" did tune in to the inherent racism in America; yet, he still couldn't convey with the kind of depth what this film so easily manages to do -- show how the Native Americans viewed the white man.
"Dead Man," which stars Johnny Depp as a city slicker caught up in the code of the West, is just about the first black-and-white western since "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" and is perhaps the only western done in the true spirit of black comedy.
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In this case, Neil Youngs annoying background music detracts from the film in much the same way Tangerine Dreams constant electronic hammering did in Thief (starring James Caan).
"Down by Law," "Mystery Train" and "Night on Earth" were all stultifyingly dull.
Filmmaker Jarmusch, best known for the much-better "Mystery Train" and "Night On Earth," among others, allows the excesses in "Dead Man" to get out of hand to the point that they become distracting - especially the gore.
Jarmusch's first full-length feature since 1991's Night on Earth is a marked departure from the director's previous outings.
Despite its serious themes, much of the film is very funny in a wry way that Jarmusch fans know well from his four previous films, which also include "Stranger Than Paradise" (1984), "Down By Law" (1986) and "Night on Earth" (1992).
"Dead Man" is directed by Jim Jarmusch ("Night on Earth" and "Mystery Train").
Dead Man, Jim Jarmusch's first feature since 1992's Night on Earth, is a quirky chronicle of one man's physical and spiritual search for a place of belonging.
This trip is photographed with intense ethereality (this, along with Jim Jarmusch’s Down By Law and Dead Man, is one of cinematographer Robby Müller’s many distinguished efforts); dusk horizons have a fluorescent, neon quality seen in no other film.
Ever since his "discovery" at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival with the quirky "Stranger Than Paradise," we've been able to count on American independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch to show us something we haven't seen before.
Back in 1984, the jokey, dilapidated ennui of Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise expressed the go-nowhere spirit of a more frazzled era; in a sense, it was the last true movie of the '70s.
(His debut Stranger Than Paradise (1984) was actually began as a short film that he added onto.)
In their quest for meaning, Nobody and Blake aren't so very different from the lost souls who populate Jarmusch's "Stranger Than Paradise" and "Down by Law."
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The Hoka's ramshackle atmosphere actually complements Robby Muller's black-and-white cinematography and Robert Ziembicki's production design, which present images of the West influenced as much by "Eraserhead" as by "Red River" or any other classic traditional Western.
Jarmusch must've seen how much fun David Lynch had with b&w portraits of ancient chugging machinery in The Elephant Man and decided to join in.