The rolling, monochrome landscapes. The often quirky bit-characters that fill the screen. The Indian who can recite William Blake poetry by heart? Yeah, probably not your average western.
Dead Man is a 1995 western by Jim Jarmusch, featuring Johnny Depp as William Blake (no, not the William Blake), that stands as a bit of a forgotten cousin of the genre. It isn’t your everyday western of gunslingers and cattle rustlers, but it does have a Neil Young soundtrack, and I think he may have been alive at the time of Billy the Kid and Butch Cassidy.
Focusing on one accountant’s degradation from city boy, to lonely outsider, to murderer and outlaw, the premise for the film is a pretty interesting one. We follow William Blake, played by Johnny Depp, as he seeks a new life in the town of Machine but instead ends up in the company of Nobody, a lonesome Indian played by Gary Farmer, who, after Blake is mortally wounded, helps to heal him as best he can and then accompanies him through the American wilderness as Blake changes, like a handsome chameleon, from naive, weedy accountant to capable outlaw and bushwhacker.
Johnny Depp’s performance as Blake is one that is quietly reserved, comparable to his role in Edward Scissorhands, far different from his roles as Jack Sparrow and Willy Wonka. But his quiet performance is also the best thing about this film – it portrays, often in facial expression alone, the differing attitudes between city-livers and countryfolk and the array of strange customs that neither fully understands about the other – and that’s not just a commentary on the late 1800s, but also on the marked differences of both peoples today. Gary Farmer as Nobody offers some comedic escape from a film that is, dare I say it, fairly bland in its content and a breath of fresh air in it’s often pretentious allusion to alternative cinema.
Behind Depp is a rolling, monochrome, often tedious, landscape. The opening scenes alone, following a train as it pushes on towards the furthest boundaries of the Western frontier, convey a sense of absolute distance; the gradual change from the comfort of recognisable land to the harsh, dangerous plains of Native Americans, wild buffalo and disconcerting strangers. The use of black and white allows the narrative to become the most important feature on the screen, meaning that the unraveling of a potentially prophetic story – if you take it as a critique of the dangers of the expanse of capitalism or as a developing cultural understanding between the White man and the Natives – cannot be blindsided by the potentially fantastic greens of the forests, and the imaginably sludgy browns of Machine. The use of colour could have given this film a little more life however, given that the monochrome can become somewhat drawn out – and I’m a self-confessed lover of black and white films. I think that the use of black and white can give you disorienting and playful imagery as in The Third Man, or allow masterful use of shadow as in Nosferatu, but here it feels dated and tedious, perhaps because the story can seem long-winded and dragging.
Stringing this all along is a haunting soundtrack by Neil Young, that Canadian cowboy alone with a guitar, presumably sat atop one of his beloved Chevy’s playing along to this sometimes mildly-hypnotic film. The music is the most western-feeling part of the whole film, the only part that could be described as being of a “layman’s tools”. It is not a constant soundtrack, but repeated motifs in the lonely guitarist’s notes claim a certain kinship to the iconic recurrences of classic western themes from the genre’s heyday.
However, if there is a message of this film, then I feel that it is a little confused. Personally, I like a film with a message – that doesn’t mean I don’t like working out what that message is for myself, but Watching Dead Man, however, I find myself searching for one in a film that is clearly attempting to be profound. This isn’t your average western – it is a revisionist western: culturally different from the westerns of the 1950s and 1960s and more in tune with societal issues and historical debate. The issue I have with it though, is that it seems unsure of itself… is it a critique of capitalist expansion? A warning against the industrialisation of the countryside? After all, the town of Machine is referred to as “the end of the line”, more than likely both literally and metaphorically. Is it teaching a message of tolerance, of bridging the gap of misunderstanding between the white man and the Native Americans? Am I thinking too much into it? Am I wasting my time even considering it? Well, a movie is what you make of it, and I haven’t seen so many crossed wires since The Hurt Locker. Nobody’s Native name translators to “he who talks loudly, saying nothing”. Sorry Mr. Jarmusch, but this was just a quote from the script, it shouldn’t have been a guideline for the outcome of the movie.
In fairness, I can see why people might view this film as hypnotic. I’m willing to admit that the first time I watched Dead Man I was hypnotised. The eerie quality of the footage, the stark differences between the slow burning majority of the film and then the snap of moments of intense, startling violence. It’s easy to see why this film has adopted an almost cult-like following. However, the first time I watched it, whilst in university, I was curled up in bed, potentially drunk, or stoned.. or both… more than likely in the small hours of the morning and I wanted it to be profound. On a rewatch, I have just found it to seem pretentious and tiring, trying too hard to be an alternative in a genre that I love. I’m sorry Jim Jarmusch, but I think I’ll stick to my spaghetti westerns and saloon shootouts… maybe this is a film you just have to get?
Johnny Depp as William Blake
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