Dead Man
Directed by Jim Jarmusch
- drama
- fantasy
- western
The story
On the run after committing murder, an accountant encounters a strange Native American man who prepares him for his journey into the spiritual world.
What it’s like
Stark black-and-white widescreen frames, mostly static and held a beat too long, with the American frontier rendered as grey-brown mud towns, bleached sky and blown-out daylight, and interiors lit by smoke and oil lamps. Neil Young's loose, feedback-soaked electric guitar runs under long stretches of near silence, while the sound of wind, wooden doors and distant gunfire carries the scenes. The vibe is elegiac and deadpan, dreamlike and slow, with dry absurd humour undercutting moments of violence that arrive suddenly and land hard, including gunshots, bloody wounds and a few brutal killings shown without lingering. Pacing is unhurried and episodic, almost drifting, and the emotional register stays wry and melancholy as a timid, bespectacled accountant is gradually stripped of his former self and reshaped by a quiet, odd companion in a long, wandering journey toward death. Best suited to a late, unhurried night or a patient film viewer who wants a quiet, strange western that treats mortality with dry humour rather than spectacle, though it is not gentle and is not for anyone wanting a conventional shoot-out western.
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