Response on the 'Dead Man' show.
An interesting take on the Western genre, Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man is at eh same time a parody on death and killing and a deeper look at life’s biggest mysteries during the wild west.
William Blake gets shot and begins a journey in the woods where he meets a Native American from a tribe who sees through him and decides to help him with his journey. The Native American, Nobody, realizes that Blake is actually dead, and that his spirit has somehow not left his body. Blake does not understand this as he is too focus on the visual and materialistic level of things. Nobody tries to make Blake see his point of view, but Blake simply doesn’t understand Nobody, as Nobody also since they first met, believes that Blake is the revolutionary English poet.
What I really enjoyed from the film was how it was like a spiritual puzzle that the audience can interpret in any way they want. Death is our only certainty just as it is our biggest mystery, and I liked watching how Blake and Nobody viewed death in different ways. Also, how Nobody was the living one, but calls himself Nobody because of how he sees himself in life, but it is Blake that is in actual fact a nobody because he is the dead one. The film is very clear cut with its direction, alluding to its black-and-white filming, but very abstract and open to interpretation- again, an allusion to a colourless world where colour is created by interpretation and giving meaning to things.
I didn’t really like how slow the film was; I felt I had to be very patient! I noticed how there was a contrasting element in the film of killing. For example Blake was dead for most of the time, and we were witnessing his spiritual journey in a material world, and this happened rather slowly. However, whenever the other characters began killing, the ones that got shot all died instantly. The shooting scenes happened so fast and it looked as if it was so easy for them to die whereas we are faced with Blake’s endless death.
Also, it is funny how Dead Man is actually a journey about life. Blake still had some things to learn before returning to the spiritual realm, where Nobody takes responsibility to bring him back there. Visually, Blake is dead too, he is blind, and Nobody tries to teach him to open his eyes. Blake doesn’t understand what is beyond his eyes, but seems to accept at the end of the film what Nobody tells him- “to return to where the spirits came from”. Blake gets pushed off shore on the boat, and slowly accepts his fate and closes his eyes, where finally, they really actually become truly open.
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