DEAD MAN | JIM JARMUSCH

Dead Man is a 1995 American Western film directed and written by Jim Jarmusch. Shot entirely in black and white, the film is considered to be a ‘psychedelic’ postmodern take on the classic American Westerns of the early 20th Century. The storyline tells of a northern city accountant in the mid 1800s who travels south to the small, hostile town of Machine for work. However, upon arrival the work is no longer available, and the events following result in him being wrongly accused of shooting a woman, and he is badly wounded in the process. A bounty is set upon him as a wanted man and, with the help of a Native American man he sets off to escape the lawmen which ultimately transcends into a strange journey, both physical and spiritual, as he slips into and accepts inevitable death.

Dead Man is a unique film which touches upon a genre which had for the longest time remained unchanged. Instead of going down the typical action-drama ‘wild west’ film, Jarmusch creates a dreamy, surreal land that seems almost reminiscent of early German expressionist films. This hallucinatory quality is reliant largely on the use of black and white over colour, which removes it one step from reality with stark, high contrast imagery and careful use of light and shadow. 

Von Morgens Bis Mitternaucht (1920)

Dead Man

The soundtrack - which was entirely improvised by Neil Young on the guitar - is also an essential part of what gives the film such a distinct feel. It helps set the pace of the movie at a slow but steady lull, an unsettling heavy pulse that pulls it once more from reality. 

The special effects used in the movie are fairly simple, keeping in line with the  low-key period feel of the film, however they are still very effective at giving the film a psychedelic feel. Jarmusch uses double exposure and long exposure footage, in addition to spiralling footage of trees and the sky to translate into film the fading transcendent visions of a dying man.

Despite this movie being a box office failure (it recovered only $1m of its $9m budget), I still thoroughly enjoyed this movie and think that Jarmusch achieved what he set out to make with this film. He uses a variety of visual techniques that effectively take the viewer into this mysterious, beautiful realm; a lucid commentary on the fragile boundaries between life and death.