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See also
Fiona
A. Villella's
review of Jonathan Rosenbaum's Dead
man
in this issue Both aspects
have since come to define what is distinct and unique
about Jarmusch's filmmaking - the emphasis on rhythm,
structure and minimalism, the poetic arrangement of
characters and events; and an outsider, critical relation
to American culture and ideologies, an investment in
foreign cultures and the very notion of "reality" or
"truth" as unstable entities, changing depending on what
perspective they're viewed from. His seven films to date
comprise a unique body of work in contemporary American
cinema. Doing away with conventional storytelling forms
and values, they reveal an intuitive and instinctive
sensibility as well as, in the later films, a poignant
longing for a truer, innocent and pure understanding of
the world. Jarmusch
continues to be one of the very few true auteurs in
contemporary American cinema, since he controls every
aspect of his filmmaking, and presents audiences with the
gift of innovative, sensitive and at times radical
filmmaking. This essay offers a survey of his career to
date, analysing each of the works in turn. As a debut,
Permanent vacation offers an extremely revealing
microcosm of the themes and storytelling techniques that
will define Jarmusch's cinema over the next twenty
years. Made whilst he was studying film at New
York University, it subsequently played in Europe where
it gained some attention. However, it remains to this day
largely unseen. Despite its occasional weaknesses,
Permanent vacation has an accomplished
experimental sensibility and a very distinct world
view. The narrative
centres on a young male, Allie Parker (Chris Parker), a
permanent drifter. It is revealed through his voice-over
that he has in fact chosen this kind of life and that it
is not simply a case of a lack of direction -- an
important distinction, which brings into focus the
central theme of Permanent vacation of adopting an
alternative, even transgressive position in society.
Allie rejects traditional social values, like
materialism, ambition and family, and chooses instead to
live an honest existence. He fully understands and
confronts the harsh truth of isolation and aloneness that
most people deny. This attitude might be interpreted as
overly bleak and solipsistic, especially when it
manifests itself in Allie ignoring his girlfriend, Leila
(Leila Gastil), and her attempts at connecting with him.
However, as the film unfolds, we see that Allie is
interested in the world around him but, rather than
engaging with it via conventional modes, maintains an
observational regard. He becomes a floating being,
unattached to anyone or anything, similar to the angels
in Wim Wender's Wings of desire (West
Germany/France 1987) who, in the first half of the that
film, observe and help where they can but remain cut off.
In fact, the theme of a spiritual messenger who strives
to enlighten the world around him or her, most often
through poetry and literature, is a recurring motif in
Jarmusch's oeuvre. It is possible to see the alternative
position represented by Allie as a projection of
Jarmusch's own personal values. Conventionally
speaking, not much happens in Permanent vacation;
the notion of a plot or storyline is subverted. Narrative
events are accidental and random, essentially forming a
series of set pieces that trace "a day in the life of a
permanent tourist". Like all of Jarmusch's films,
Permanent vacation is held together by a rhythmic
quality (via the score, cutting and composition) and a
unique approach to narrative in which random characters
and motifs throughout resonate with each other and
suggest "meanings" or themes. In other words,
Jarmusch never forcefully constructs a story but rather
allows the viewer to string together implied associations
and construct their own meanings. In Permanent
vacation the notion of an existential "way" or vision
is slowly revealed to be the central theme through the
coalescing of various motifs (John Lurie's sax playing
character and his rendition of "Somewhere over the
Rainbow", the black man in the cinema foyer's story about
an avant-garde sax player, the references to Nicholas
Ray). This oblique, associative connection between
narrative information, character and cultural texts, and
the metaphors they evoke, will become characteristic of
Jarmusch's oeuvre as a whole. Permanent
vacation is also about the world that Allie sees and
its post-apocalyptic condition. The act of walking
through a strange and unfamiliar place will be replayed
constantly throughout Jarmusch's films. Walking
establishes a distinction between the individual and the
world around him or her. Almost every character Allie
meets is "crazy" and every landscape he enters strangely
deserted, in ruins. Jarmusch's critiques America and its
reigning ideologies and institutions by figuring its
landscape as a wasteland. However, it is precisely within
these deserted and run-down landscapes that he finds his
alternative, bohemian subjects - his glimpses of
paradise. In one very
strange scene, Allie returns to the house where he grew
up. It now lies in ruins after being bombed during the
war with the Chinese (as we learn from Allie's words to
Leila) -- a war that killed his father and sent his
mother to a mental institution. But when did the Chinese
bomb New York City in the twentieth century? The film
gains a heightened, experimental quality when Jarmusch
pushes the narrative into a realm completely detached
from historical verisimilitude. Suddenly, the film's
world becomes fundamentally ambiguous: is it a projection
of Allie's thoughts, or a surreal expression of
Jarmusch's and Allie's profound isolation from the "real"
world? From the very
beginning of his career, Jarmusch has practised a form of
cultural archaeology, defining his characters in relation
to items of literature, poetry, music, and cinema (both
low and high, past and contemporary). In Permanent
vacation, for example, Allie identifies himself as an
inheritor of Charlie Parker. There is also a reference to
James Dean in Nicholas Ray's Rebel without a cause
(US 1955) -- most explicit in the apartment scene at the
beginning of the film when Leila places, the right way
around,the cigarette that Allie has put into his mouth,
mimicking a famous scene between Dean and Natalie Wood.
Further references to Ray (Jarmusch was his production
assistant during his final years) continue throughout the
film, both incidentally, in the scene where Ray's The
savage innocents (Italy/France/UK 1960) is playing in
the cinema Allie visits), and thematically. This homage
highlights the specific tradition of American cinema to
which Jarmusch belongs. At the very
end, before boarding a ship for Paris, Allie meets a
young French man (Chris Hameon). Their encounter is
significant in many ways: they cross paths at exact
points of departure and arrival (Allie is leaving New
York for Paris, the French man has just arrived in New
York from Paris), are similar in appearance (down to
their recently acquired tattoos), and both are drifters.
Indeed, they represent opposing cultural "twins"
literally "changing places". This dramatises a key theme
in Jarmusch's cinema that Jonathan Rosenbaum identifies
as: "the notion of looking at the same thing in different
ways -- or looking at different things the same way"
[2].
Both acts -- Allie's leaving the country and the arrival
of a "foreigner" into America -- highlight a crucial
gesture (being open to the experience of travel and the
unknown), which externalises one's position in relation
to culture (highly significant given America's historical
tendency toward isolationalism) and objectifies
history. In Stranger
than paradise Jarmusch's ironic commentary on
contemporary America, and his own unique filmmaking
style, become better defined. It is also the beginning of
a trilogy continuing with Down by law (US 1987)
and Mystery train (US/Japan 1989) that explores
extensively the themes of foreign perspectives on
America, and the relations between people and
place. Stranger
than paradise single-handedly established Jarmusch's
reputation as a smart, innovative director. It earned him
the Golden Leopard at the 1984 Locarno Film Festival and
the Camera D'or from Cannes in 1984. Its extraordinary
success and impact upon audiences both at the time of its
release and even today is ironic, since it seems
inversely proportionate to its extreme narrative
minimalism. As one commentator observed: "The most
fascinating aspect of Stranger than paradise is
indeed the fact that it communicates so much with so
little." [4].
And another, more recently: "populated almost entirely by
non-actors and first-time actors, sketchy in its
narrative, frightfully deadpan in its jokes, it was the
sort of movie that changed the way other movies looked...
[5].
Its appeal derives from a combination of elements:
an unconventional, highly formal approach to narrative; a
play with audience expectations of narrative and
performance; and strong character acting. Jarmusch
successfully documents the life and attitudes of a pair
of bohemian characters Willy (John Lurie) and Eddie
(Richard Edson); the entrance of a new element into their
world, a younger woman from Hungary (Eva played by Ezster
Balint); the strange trio that they form; and their
journey across the American landscape. The
anti-narrative approach is evident in a present-tense
quality, reducing the story to a series of single moments
marked by the duration of time, in which the characters'
physical traits and mannerisms define who they are and
how they relate to the world around them. Hence, each
scene enables us to observe funny and odd encounters
between characters, as well as individual quirks and
idiosyncrasies (such as Aunt Lottie's regional Hungarian
accent and classic one-liners: "I am zee win-n-er" and
"You son-of-a-bitch"). The reliance on character acting,
the type of performance that privileges the material
presence of the actor (traits of body, speech and manner)
is another characteristic of Jarmusch's cinema, plainly
evident in his technique of writing roles for specific
actors. Many moments
comprise two or more characters in a confined space (such
as a car or apartment) either engaging in inconsequential
chitchat or remaining silent. For example, rather than
cutting straight to Willy's and Eddie's arrival in
Cleveland, Jarmusch stays with them whilst they ride in
the car, capturing their idle conversation, antics,
sudden revelations (such as Eddie's "I never knew you
were from Hungary" and Willy's reply, "I'm as American as
you are") and occasional silence. The film is a string of
"in between" moments, where nothing in particular happens
and where any attempt by the characters to make something
happen is ultimately thwarted. Despite the
naturalism that fills every moment, Jarmusch's guiding
hand is apparent on many levels: in the rhythmic
structure created by the separation of each scene with
moments of black leader (fusing simultaneously the
duration and contemplation), and the theme of alienation
and disillusionment that permeates proceedings without
ever being directly articulated. This theme is present in
the extended silences between characters, the pauses
between scenes, the rundown locale of New York and the
monotonal quality of the American landscape in general.
At certain times, it is articulated by an authorial
perspective taken on the characters and their situation,
for example, the plaintive orchestral score that marks
Eva's arrival into America (the score functioning in this
regard similarly to Neil Young's score in Dead man
(US/Germany/Japan 1995), like a "commentary" on the
action, according to Rosenbaum [XX]),
or when the trio are eclipsed by their environment, for
example, the scene at Lake Erie. The sense of
disillusionment and malaise increases with each step of
the road journey the characters take from New York to
Cleveland, and then Cleveland to Miami, in which their
aspirations to a good time and recklessness are quashed
under the weight of boredom, monotony and unfortunate
coincidences. Character,
narrative and form are all informed by the same sense of
vacuity. The inexpressive, undesiring, and inarticulate
nature of the characters (Willy can hardly remember a
joke, the incompleteness of its recounting becomes the
point itself) precludes the possibility of a strong,
driving narrative. The plot is a series of random,
accidental events that can change the direction of its
course at any moment. Jarmusch undermines any fruitful
culmination of the attempted road journey, concluding at
the point where the characters' trajectories have
radically diverged, parodying any possibility of
commonality or narrative closure. The
unconventional narrative again facilitates a critique of
America, the two impulses inseparable. The film, without
ever explicitly stating it, is more about the state of
America then anything else, with the three characters its
eternally alienated inhabitants. It plays with dominant
myths of America as a promised land (and in this regard
it reverses the stereotype of Eastern Europe as a bleak
land of misery and factory workers) and the road journey
as a cathartic experience. Notably, it is the foreign
character who begins the narrative of exploring America
and who makes it a possibility for the culturally
isolated and solipsistic Willy and
Eddie. Down by
law continues the theme of two Americans and a
foreigner wandering through an American landscape. In
contrast to Stranger's visual and music spareness,
Down by law shows more cluttered landscapes
(shabby New Orleans, mud-filled Louisiana) and has a
playful score (by John Lurie and Tom Waits).
Cinematographer, Robby Müller will be given another
opportunity to explore the American landscape to greater
poetic effect in Dead man. If Stranger
than paradise sought to seal off any ultimate
cathartic experience between the characters and their
relation to the landscape, Down by law suggests a
similar project, though in this case the result is
somewhat contrived and forced. Unlike Stranger's
energy and freshness, due mainly to the performances and
their balance with other elements of mise en
scène and overall narrative progression, in
Down by law there is an overemphasis on narrative
structure as the source of meaning over rhythms and
tensions internal to the scenes. The film floats across
various genres and styles (slapstick comedy, noir,
prison escape, road journey) without settling into any
one of them. Its characters and situations resemble
signposts, their presence in the overall story
practically functional. [7]
It will not be until Night on earth that
Jarmusch's literary approach will be realised less
through architectural means (the arrangement and
combination of multiple, parallel narratives) and more
through affective results where there is greater
resonance in character and story. In Down by
law, two Americans, Zac (Tom Waits) and Jack (John
Lurie), and an Italian, Bob (Roberto Benigni), find
themselves together in an enclosed space. Although this
space changes empirically -- from prison cell to outdoor
swamp -- it essentially remains the same. The film's
question is thus abstract: what happens when two
Americans and a foreigner are locked in a confined space?
Who possesses the vision to see a way out? What are the
cultural differences in play? Such abstraction is evident
in Jarmusch's breezy overlooking of plot and back-stories
(the way Bob suddenly appears in the narrative, his
mysterious "homicide", and the trio's escape from
prison). As in
Stranger than paradise, the feeling of circling
the same terrain is thrown into relief by an unreal,
fantastic, chance discovery. The three come across a
diner named "Luigi's Tin Top", located amongst forest and
swamp, in which an Italian woman, Nicoletta (Nicoletta
Braschi), lives. Bob instantly falls in love with her and
remains with her forever. This is like the notion of war
in Permanent vacation -- mythic and somewhat
surreal. Zac and Jack then walk away down separate paths
toward their respective destinies. The image of a fork in
the road that closes the film is symmetrical with the
crosscutting and eventual merging of Zac and Jack that
occurs at the beginning. Such storytelling symmetry will
resurface in Dead man. It is again
the foreigner who symbolically opens up the narrow world
of the American characters, and has the privilege of
greater insight. Not only does Bob discover the escape
route that leads Zac and Jack out of the prison, his
continued references to great American poets (Walt
Whitman and Robert Frost) contrast with Zac's and Jack's
complete non-interest in this area. The poetry recited
resonates with the film's narrative structure. For
example, Bob quotes the following phrase from Frost's
"The Road Not Taken", which begins by describing the
film's closing shot and is overall a meditation on the
mode of life one adopts (a theme raised by Permanent
vacation): It is not a
big stretch to see the "one less travelled by" as
encapsulating the perennially foreign, alternative
perspective that haunts Jarmusch's cinema (and his own
career path). Unlike the path travelled by Zac and Jack,
Bob's path (non-American, optimistic, altruistic) is the
one that "has made all the difference", most evident in
the fact that he finds his fairytale book ending.
[8]
Jarmusch attributes the transcendent perspective of being
able to see the past, present and future (on the
narrative level and in terms of America's cultural past)
to his foreign characters, and in this gesture powerfully
suggests that vision in American culture and society lies
with those traditionally considered non-American -- and
that contemporary America is a land devoid of
spirituality or any sign of richness. Mystery
train concludes the trilogy of a collective of
foreigners and Americans travelling through an American
landscape. More like Stranger and less like
Down by law, however, Mystery train's
narrative has a subtle, affective aspect relating to
human relationships and the kinds of bonds that form in
transitory moments. The three stories that comprise
Mystery train are all based on foreign characters
moving through roughly the same space and temporality in
Memphis -- two Japanese tourists, an Italian woman
stranded there overnight and an English rocker who seems
to have adopted Memphis as his home. Jarmusch explores
these separate yet intertwined stories through an overall
episodic structure and playful approach to
narrative. The very
gesture of inserting foreign characters in an American
landscape and viewing this world from their perspective
is itself (as Rosenbaum argues) radical since, by
default, it addresses the audience in non-exclusive
terms, that is, as not exclusively white Americans.
[9]
In Mystery train we see the different meanings
Memphis accrues depending on perspective. More so than
previously, Jarmusch places greater emphasis on his
characters' relations with others (young lovers,
female-female and male-male friendships) so that
Mystery train becomes both about the encounter
between people and the objectification of
culture. Jarmusch's
particular sensibility -- what Rosenbaum identifies as
being "more a poet than a prose writer" [10]
-- means that his films work through impressions rather
than the information. On one level, Mystery train
works according to an informational narrative model --
several key details such as a passing train, Elvis
Presley's "Blue Moon" on the early morning radio, and a
gunshot, fix each narrative as parallel. But since
Jarmusch's project is abstract -- the idea of looking at
the same thing from different perspectives -- these
details don't necessarily lead to a greater story picture
or dramatic arc but further emphasise the impressionistic
effect. For example, the wide shot of Jun (Masatoshi
Nagase) and Hitzuko (Youki Kudoh) wandering through the
streets of Memphis is later echoed by a similar shot of
Luisa (Nicoletta Braschi) walking through the same
streets. Each narrative is filled with details that
define the flavour and nature of place, for example, the
fast-talking tourist guide at Sun Studios, the empty
Memphis streets, the run-down Arcade hotel, the black
club that Johnny (Joe Strummer) hangs out at, the sombre
score throughout the film. Furthermore, the narrative is
played out almost entirely through character rather than
plot, where 'personality' is crucial (hence, the cameos
by Screamin' Jay Hawkins and Joe Strummer). In addition,
the structure of parallel narratives itself gives rise to
what Murray Smith terms "'architectural' pleasure", a
form of spectatorial pleasure derived from the poetic and
ironic echo between recurring details: The culture
that is objectified in Mystery train is America's
mythical south and its legacy of rock'n'roll and blues.
As in Stranger than paradise a melancholy hovers,
evoked subtly through measured rhythms and plaintive
score but never directly dramatised. If Elvis Presley
represents the American Dream and Memphis the place of
trail-blazing American music, then -- true to Jarmusch's
deadpan, laconic view -- both exist today in a shadowy,
ghostly form. Rather, as the first episode ("Far from
Yokohoma") testifies, the legacy of '50s America lives on
in the way its meanings are appropriated, suggesting that
culture lives on intangibly -- never in the place where
it was born, always in the act of its re-invention and
appropriation. Jarmusch poignantly emphasises the
miniature within the grand -- placing his foreign
characters within playgrounds of culture and history,
focusing on where they fit in relation to this culture,
and also telescoping their street-level, "anytime,
anywhere" encounters with locals or their small moments
of being with someone or of being alone against the
backdrop of a haunted America. It is not
until the final episode ("Lost in Space") that Jarmusch
explores the perspective of black America. The hidden
imperialism of the mythical South and the way it wrote
black musicians out of its history is implied in the
scene where Jimmy questions his black friend, Will
Robinson (Rick Aviles), about why the Arcade motel is
filled with pictures of Elvis Presley but not Martin
Luther King or Carl Perkins, especially given it is
located in a black neighbourhood and run by black men
(Screamin' Jay Hawkins and Cinqué Lee). Will
responds sardonically: "It's because white people own the
motel". With his fifth
feature, Jarmusch continues his architectural approach to
storytelling by replaying the same story (an encounter
between a taxi driver and passenger) in different parts
of the globe (L.A., New York, Paris, Rome, Helsinki).
Once again, his openness toward cultural difference and
his working outside the dichotomy of us and them is
matched by a narrative construction that emphasises
simultaneity and the idea that there is no one single
experience or perspective. The abstract nature of
Night on earth (1992) becomes apparent as the
recurring template keeps on getting filtered through new
details and nuances. However, as in Down by law,
the concept ultimately outweighs the mise en
scène and the film's progression becomes
somewhat mechanical. Its charm lies
in the performances. "Character as personality" is more
present here then in any other Jarmusch film, and detail
is paramount. It exemplifies Jarmusch's approach to
writing characters based on specific actors, and then
generating a story from the nature of their distinctive
peculiarities. Jarmusch's casting -- from Cassavetes star
Gena Rowlands to Kaurismäki regular Matti
Pellonpää -- puts into play a series of
homages, cross-references and associations. As J.
Hoberman puts it, "each actor in Jarmusch's splendidly
eccentric cast is some sort of text" [12].
They bring to the film their own baggage that works
ironically in relation to other aspects. One of the
delights of the first, L.A.-based episode, concerning the
encounter between a high-flying casting agent and a woman
taxi driver, is the casting of Rowlands and Winona Ryder
in roles that are slightly at odds with either their
traditional character roles or real-life associations
made with them. Ryder's highly scruffy, tomboyish cab
driver who refuses Rowlands' offer to star in a major
film because "things are working out" for her as a cab
driver and potential mechanic not only plays ironically
with each actor as signifying texts but also with
the mainstream logic that everyone wants fame and
glamour. The casting of Roberto Benigni is another
example of the way Jarmusch works with the uniqueness of
each actor to enrich the film's performance-driven set
pieces. Benigni single-handedly dominates the entire
episode in which he appears through his boisterous,
ever-expansive and energetic performance. Part of the
richness and pleasure of Night on earth derives
from the rich detail in each character's performance --
from Giancarlo Esposito's wildly hysterical Yo-Yo to
Béatrice Dalle's monstrous, slightly narky blind
woman to Pellonpää's heavy, sullen yet finely
controlled performance. In fact, Hoberman sees the
proliferation of details in Night on earth
combined with the static driver-passenger
relationship as leading to a strange sort of morphing and
transmuting in the film -- "one immigrant driver melting
into another as Rosie Perez mutates into Béatrice
Dalle, Benigni's confession segues into
Pellonpää's". So what drives Night on earth
is the tension and the myriad associations evoked in
this continuing sequence of repeating, slightly varied,
narratives. Once again,
Jarmusch focuses on miniature, transitory exchanges
between eccentric characters to comment on themes as
diverse as stardom and independence in Hollywood, the
melting pot of New York, preconceptions of disability,
and morality. Overall, the film exists somewhere between
seriousness in its juxtaposing of such a diverse array of
slices of reality and the mental engine one senses
beneath the surface; and light-heartedness, as it coasts
from one entertaining detail to the next. Ultimately, it
will come to signify the end of a phase in Jarmusch's
career and what Rosenbaum calls his "honeymoon with the
American press" [13]. Since the
start of his career, Jarmusch has intermittently dabbled
in short filmmaking. He has so far made five shorts in
total, all variations on a similar theme encapsulated by
their title, Coffee and cigarettes. Only three of
these have screened publicly. All three feature two or
more people at a café or bar drinking coffee and
smoking cigarettes. Minimal, and classic in design, they
are enormously funny and characteristically Jarmuschian.
In an interview, Jarmusch mused: "...hey're almost like
cartoons to me." [14]
Like Gus Van Sant, Jarmusch seeks from short filmmaking a
sense of liberation: "it's a relief from making a feature
film where everything has to be more carefully mapped
out. So I like doing them and they're ridiculous and the
actors can improvise a lot, and they don't have to be
really realistic characters that hit a very specific tone
as in a feature film" [15].
His intention is to continue adding to the Coffee and
cigarettes series and ultimately compiling them as a
sort of "feature". The first
Coffee and cigarettes (US 1986), made around the
time of Down by law, is set in Italy and stars
Steven Wright and Roberto Benigni. Seated at a small
table in some generic decaying environment, both are
extremely high-wired, muttering nonsensical and random
sentences -- a result, it seems, of the lethal
combination of espresso coffee and non-stop cigarettes.
Jarmusch plays on their cultural differences, a monotone,
deadpan American contrasted with an exuberant Italian,
and the fact that they often don't understand each
other. The second
Coffee and cigarettes -- Memphis version (US 1989)
is set in Memphis and stars Steve Buscemi, Cinqué
Lee and Joie Lee. It is based on a pair of slightly
irritable and insolent twins, played by Joie and
Cinqué, down and out in Memphis. Everything is
beautifully played to excess: the pair's extremely catty
though classically sibling relationship; the story that
Steve Buscemi tells; Buscemi's own Southern accent and
gullible, "hillbilly" ways; and the way the twin's
persistently ignore him. The entire sequence is quite
delirious and again part of the humour derives from a
contrast of cultures -- the twin's inherent disdain,
almost disgust, for the Southern ways embodied by
Buscemi. Jarmusch gives this a political edge when Joie
explains that they don't like Elvis because of his
"cultural debt" to a host of unknown black
musicians. The third
Coffee and cigarettes -- somewhere in
California (US 1993) features two laconic, deadpan
Americans (Tom Waits and Iggy Pop) discussing the real
difficulty in quitting cigarettes especially during
coffee drinking - a topic that echoes Jarmusch's own
sentiments as articulated in Wane Wang's Blue in the
face (US 1995). Apparent in
the series is Jarmusch's ability for sharp cultural
observation -- he tunes right in to the icons of
contemporary urban culture, coffee and cigarettes, tools
not only for the longing and release of desire but also
important accessories in points of contact and social
interaction. With equal insight, he hilariously plays on
the addictive nature of these social tools. Although they
may be made off the cuff, these shorts are very
Jarmuschian in their emphasis on different cultural
perspectives and the myriad, minute ways that such
perspectives play out against each other, low-budget
style, formal clarity and eccentric characters. They also
exemplify the way he is able to achieve resonance in the
smallest exchange between characters, whether it takes
the form of extended silence, biting sarcasm or unspoken
respect. As
commentators noted at the time of its release, Dead
man was radically different in its tone and force
then anything Jarmusch had made before. His previous
films were, overall, fairly slight tales from the
fringes, entertaining and illuminating in an oddball way
but finally little more. In contrast, Dead man
works on another level altogether, and Rosenbaum's
book-length study is exceptional in coming to grips with
its complexity. Dead man extends the
unconventional view of America and character-based,
poetic approach to storytelling to a new level, setting
up its own universe within which to play out a scathing
critique of American ideologies. Notably, Jarmusch is
able to strike at the very heart of these ideologies via
the form of the Western and its traditional
representation of American history. Motifs carried
on from previous Jarmusch films include alternative
cultural perspectives, the theme of outsiders, the
attention to place or one's cultural environment, deadpan
humour and running jokes, and the anti-conventional
approach to narrative. His directorial achievement lies
not only in the film's radical form but also in its
shifts from absurdist humour and shocking violence to
intense mysticism and serenity. Jarmusch intentionally
constructed Dead man so that on one level it is a
simple story about the journey a young man, William Blake
(Johnny Depp), takes after he is branded an outlaw; and
his adoption by a benevolent Native American, Nobody
(Gary Farmer), and the friendship that develops between
the two as the latter guides the former to a spiritual
death. However, on another level, Dead man is a
ferociously political, anti-American of (as Rosenbaum
puts it) "millennial" proportions, filled with layers of
meaning and resonance that only become fully felt after
subsequent viewings. [16] Traditional
concepts like civilisation versus wilderness, industrial
progress, and capitalism in general are rendered in a
heightened, symbolic and nightmarish way. The entire film
is imbued with a strange fable-like quality; characters,
actions, images and sounds have an elemental quality and
impact powerfully. The central journey is a strange
meditation on the very meaning of existence and the
rejection of the world as it is known for some higher,
purer vision. But Jarmusch never plunges, even
momentarily, into a New Age sentimentalism, (for example,
the scene at the end of the film when Nobody has placed
Blake into a canoe to return him to "the place from which
he came", to which Blake replies "Cleveland?") but
maintains a level of mystery throughout. Paradoxically,
the film's impact, and in particular its insight into
contemporary America, is made more powerful by its
mythical, fable-like quality. Part of the
force of Dead man is due to the way that Jarmusch
has created his own frame of reference in the film: the
inexorable nature of the narrative (Blake's destiny as a
dead man foreshadowed by the haunting words of coal man
[Crispin Glover]); the metaphysical quality that
meanings and concepts assume (white man as destroyer of
the land and its peoples; a Native American as a
"spiritual messenger"; the spiritual, and by default
anti-American, quality to which both the poetry of
William Blake and Native American culture are
linked). On the formal
level, there is a constant rhyming of scenes (the
beginning and the end giving the narrative a distinct
symmetry; individual scenes repeated from different
character points of view) and refrains between scenes
(for example, the use of fadeouts and black leader
between scenes). Jarmusch takes just as much care in his
portrayal of characters and cultures -- white America is
portrayed as a culture of depravity, death, and violence;
whilst Native American culture is portrayed
matter-of-factly, with absolute authenticity and
attention to detail, (and not, significantly, in a
glowing light). However, the evil work of the former and
its attempted annihilation of the latter is seen and
mentioned throughout (the infected blankets, the killing
of buffalos, the burnt-out and rampaged Indian
settlements, the entire Trading Post scene). Jarmusch
radically revises the Western genre through the
authenticity in his cultural representation of Native
America and the constant theme of genocide that haunts
the film. Rosenbaum
describes Dead man as one way that the film can be
seen as "the fulfilment of a cherished counterculture
dream, the acid western" [17].
Some examples of its hallucinogenic portrayal of white
America include the mind-boggling trio of possum skinners
played by Iggy Popp, Billy Bob Thorton and Jared Harris
(in which concepts like family, Catholicism, and general
human relationships are twisted and subverted to the
extreme), the Dickinson industrial plant and its head, Mr
Dickinson (Robert Mitchum), who addresses a stuffed but
still menacing bear when he is actually imparting
information to a trio of bounty hunters sitting at his
desk. Perhaps the most scathing of these portrayals is
the character of Cole Wilson (Lance Henriksen), both a
cannibal (who ate his own parents no less) and a
legendary killer. If white America is a cultural force
propelled by capitalism and the pursuit of materialist
gain at the cost of people's lives then Cole is its
ultimate, ugliest embodiment. Cole's abhorrence of, and
even intimidation by, anything even remotely spiritual in
nature is blatantly evident in the shocking image where
he crushes a marshal's head under his foot because "it
looks like a goddam religious icon". The mythical status
bestowed on certain characters is evident in a shot
toward the end of the film where Nobody and Cole confront
each other. This is the first time they're in the same
frame, and we view the scene from Blake's point of view
in wide shot, giving it a strange tableau
feel. Throughout,
there is a distinction between white America and Native
America to the extent that one could say they exist in
separate epistemological and metaphysical realms.
Whenever the two cross, it is a terrifying, otherworldly
moment marked by the shock of a lightning bolt, or a
clash of two visions. The way that Nobody and Cole shoot
at each other and then simultaneously fall to the ground
suggests a cancelling out of the two cultures (one
devouring, the other spiritual) that simply cannot live
together or acknowledge each other. The scene reinforces
the notion that purity and vision lies elsewhere,
certainly not among the land of the living, but elsewhere
in some instinctual and sensuous realm beyond
representation. On one level,
Dead man is a deeply felt and genuine homage to an
ancient culture with its traditions, tribes,
value-systems and beliefs, so brutally and mindlessly
annihilated. With great acuity, Jarmusch bases the film
upon a fleeting moment in America's history when these
two disparate cultures lived side by side (though with
ongoing hostility): In Dead
man, this fleeting moment is shot through with
immense gravity and poignancy, haunted as it is by the
theme of genocide. As Rosenbaum states: The second
major level of the film is its gesture toward the only
remaining source of truth and hope within an already
corrupted world: an existential, counter-cultural
position critical of established truths (institutional
religion, capitalism, industrialisation, imperialism),
pursuing and constructing an alternative universe.
Jarmusch enacts this radical position on the level of
form itself: more than ever, he eschews conventional plot
logic and a transparency in meaning for opacity,
symbolism and metaphor (the journeying hero of the
narrative as dead man; the conventional icons of the
Western disturbingly refigured; the profound
preoccupation with death and associated themes of
violence and industrialisation; the gesture of "passing
through the mirror"). Both aspects are what made Dead
man at the time of its release, according to
Rosenbaum, a "litmus test" for white viewers. The
relationship between Nobody and Blake is at the centre of
the narrative and its emotional anchor. Although their
communication seems to be at complete odds (like the
[white] viewer, Blake mistakes Nobody's reciting
of William Blake's poetry as "Indian malarky" that he
can't understand and Nobody sees Blake as an incarnation
of the poet himself), they become genuinely attached as
riding and life companions. Jarmusch has stated that he
wrote the part of William Blake with Depp in mind because
of his passive quality as an actor. Morphing from nerdy
accountant to lone survivor in the American wilderness,
from faint-hearted and fumbling with a gun to alert and
ruthless, Depp's success in mapping this transformation
is extraordinary. The transformation takes place in
relation to Nobody, who becomes another source of
identity since he partly becomes what Nobody envisages
him as: a reincarnated Blake writing his poetry with
blood. Jarmusch
beckons the audience to suspend its quest for rationality
and the impulse to have everything fully explained and,
instead, follow the line of imagination: to feel
instinctively and intuitively the dread of Neil Young's
cut-throat electric guitar score; the inexorable rhythm
of the opening sequence; the mystery of Nobody and his
role as a "spiritual messenger"; the sense of a primal
journey Blake is taking; the strange beauty of a bare
tree or Blake's act of lying next to a slain reindeer;
the intensely threatening presence of Glover. The height
of the film's abstract, purely cinematic tendency is
Blake's walk through the Makah settlement and the
hallucinatory nature which the images and the score
assume as Blake borders on unconsciousness. At one point,
a close-up of Blake's semi-conscious, falling gaze gives
way to an array of faces swimming before his glazed eyes
that he can barely register. Why is this is
an especially powerful moment? Is it the anthropological
weight of these faces that have never been recorded
before, pinning their gaze on another who appears strange
and different? Is it the exchange of looks between a
dying white man and a group of Native Americans (where
such an exchange of looks defines a lot of Jarmusch's
cinema) -- two historically and culturally separate and
opposite entities, here placed before each other?
Although answers fail us, we cannot deny the film's force
or truth. Following on
from their collaboration in Dead man, Jarmusch
made a music documentary on Neil Young and his band Crazy
Horse's "Broken Arrow" tour. Year of the horse is
Jarmusch's only feature-length music-based film though he
has made many music video clips during the '80s and '90s
for artists ranging from Tom Waits and Talking Heads to
Big Audio Dynamite. Year of the
horse is a modest exploration of the Crazy Horse
band, its music and history. A distinct melancholy
hovers, as Jarmusch juxtaposes footage from the '60s to
the '80s with footage from the present-day. As Tom Ryan
notes, "Everywhere a sense of mortality reigns over the
band's movements." [20]
Apart from various present-day interviews with the band
members and also most memorably, Young's father, extended
sections of the documentary are given over to Crazy
Horse's live performance. In these sequences of continued
performance, time and space is magically suspended and
surrendered to the rhythms and emotions of the
music. Throughout the
interviews, it becomes evident that the band's long
history together, involving the entire gamut of life
experience, has resulted in deep, rock solid bonds. This
collective likeness and understanding is expressed in
their powerful ability to create music as a group entity
- music that is deeply felt, transcendental and poignant.
Jarmusch understands this, and by allowing the music to
speak for itself rather than imposing his own style or
interpretation upon it, his own values become evident --
not only his deep respect for music and belief in its
spiritual quality, but also his anti-commercialism and
anti-sensationalism. Year of the
Horse is a Jarmusch film in other ways -- it is
low-budget, "proudly" (as the credits declare) filmed on
Super 8, Hi-8 and 16mm, without virtuoso shooting,
composition or editing. Yet it is still affecting and
assured. As Ryan says: "Year of the horse
definitively demonstrates, to anyone who's still
interested, that quality is a question of vision rather
than budget" [21]
- a statement that could apply to all of Jarmusch's
films. Another quality that makes it distinctly Jarmusch
is the global geographic spread, tracing the band's tour
through Lyon, Glasgow, Frankfurt, London and "somewhere
in Europe". The exuberant German-speaking fan who
introduces the documentary emphasises cross-cultural
appropriation and foreign points of view. Throughout the
interviews, band member Poncho harps on the fact that it
is impossible for Jarmusch to be able to capture the full
meaning of the band Crazy Horse -- its years of shared
experience - in a mere documentary. But, rather than
aggrandizing the band as a hype phenomenon, Jarmusch
emphasises its skill and achievement honestly and
modestly. Crazy Horse is depicted as a locus of raw,
emotional power and its synergy, enabling it to reach
boundless emotional heights on stage. Jarmusch emphasises
their organic quality, their immersion in the pure act of
making and playing music. This is another example of the
humanist strain in Jarmusch's cinema -- a real
appreciation and respect for bonds and relationships held
together by a pursuit that is tied to art and to an
expression through art which can be transcendental,
enlightening or empowering. It is an inherently utopian
vision. What Dead
man and Ghost Dog signal in Jarmusch's career
is not only a more politicised vision of contemporary
America but one predicated on poetry -- both as a
narrative motif, figured as visionary and empowering; and
formally, in the way that both films progress according
to a poetic logic [22]. In Ghost
Dog, as in Dead man, central themes and
preoccupations take shape gradually and obliquely.
Seeingly tangential narrative events are strung together,
and the film overall shifts between various narratives
and styles (the hitman-mob narrative, which is
pastiche-like; Ghost Dog's friendship with Pearline
(Camille Winbush), which is realist; Ghost Dog's interior
world, especially as expressed in the literary references
to Hagakure, heightened and subjective). Although
Ghost Dog and Dead man work very
differently in terms of their narrative arcs (one is a
road/existential journey whilst the other examines the
repercussions of a single event in a hitman's life) both
are infused with a sense of pathos and tragedy. This
sense is tied to the loss of an understanding of the
world predicated on poetry and an appreciation of
culture. This nexus of poetry, history and a metaphysical
understanding of the world is aligned in both films with
a traditionally marginalised constituent of America
(Native America in Dead man, Afro-America in
Ghost Dog), and thus both films subvert aspects of
white America (more vehemently so in Dead
man). Jarmusch holds
Ghost Dog together via a subtle form of symbolic
resonance, rhyme and intuitive connection between events,
and an overall hypnotic, affective style that seems to
express the grace and profundity of Ghost Dog's mind-body
unity. Some examples of symbolic resonance: the image of
a bear lying dead on a highway later echoes the image of
Ghost Dog, sprawled on the road, gunshot and dead, the
connection between the two made explicit by the redneck's
comment "'aint too many of these big black fuckers left";
the combat suit worn by these rednecks later seen worn by
a black man in the neighbourhood whom Ghost Dog crosses
paths with; Ghost Dog's ominous crossing of paths with
this black man; the circulation of the Rashomon
text and the enactment of the notion of seeing the same
thing from multiple perspectives; and the centrality of
literature in the film. The gravity
attributed to certain events -- for example, the act of
Ghost Dog silently driving through and observing the
streets of his neighbourhood or the exchange between
Ghost Dog and a man dressed in combat attire in the
street, rendered in slow-motion -- bestows upon them a
distinct symbolism. In both examples, Jarmusch achieves a
highly sensual match between the score and the image, so
that the emotional gravity of scenes is inextricable from
the score's rhythms (which range from hip-hop and Eastern
motifs to reggae and jazz). The film's
sensuous rhythms, beats, opiate sense of time,
obliqueness and general surrealism gently underscore the
theme of black America. Related to this is the ethos of
appropriation, a DJ form of sampling that has been
identified by Rosenbaum. (23) Forms of music like rap,
hip-hop, reggae and dub emerged from black subcultures at
various moments in history and are characterised by
methods of assemblage. Ghost Dog dramatises
this theme both formally (in its editing style, such as
the use of lap dissolves and subtle jump-cutting) and
thematically, in the way that characters are informed by
their appropriation of cultural texts, styles or genres
and the way they discuss such items. Ghost Dog
aligns itself with the tradition of resistance through
appropriation that characterises these forms of music by
placing at the centre of its narrative a young black
American man who reinvents himself as a modern day
samurai and lives according to the tenets of an
eighteenth century text, Yamamoto Tsunetomo's
Hagakure: the Book of the Samurai. The film
itself is a pastiche of cinematic appropriations and
references, most notably Jean-Pierre Melville's Le
Samourai (France/Italy 1967) and Seijun Suzuki's
Branded to kill (Japan 1966). Ghost Dog
extends Melville's idea of the prefatory quote from
Hagakure by punctuating the entire narrative with
such quotes. The references to Le Samourai include
the white gloves Ghost Dog wears before a contract; his
spiritual relation to birds, which is tied to his
omnipresence that enables him to foresee or predict
others' actions; and the tragic ending of both films in
which the hitman sacrifices himself for another.
Formally, both Ghost Dog and Le Samourai
possess a mesmerising quality due in part to the
attention paid to the central, silent, single-minded
character. Branded to kill, another landmark
hitman narrative, is referenced in the scene where Ghost
Dog eliminates Sonny by shooting bullets up a
pipeline. However,
unlike Le Samourai and Branded to kill,
which are primarily suspense-driven, the hitman-mob
narrative in Ghost Dog is essentially a reference
to an archetypal genre deployed to ironic effect by
Jarmusch (especially when the characters themselves refer
to "the final shoot-out scene"). In fact, these
small-time, Italo-American gangsters are an amusing bunch
of aging, over-weight caricatures behind in their rent,
operating out of a small room at the back of a Chinese
restaurant, dithering in their decision-making. Jarmusch
has them forever watching cartoons, since this echoes
their hollowness - although they look like gangsters they
lack any real sense of purpose -- and emphasises the
senseless nature of criminal violence. In terms of
cultural appropriation, unlike the solemn text of
Hakagure that Ghost Dog imbibes, the mobsters
remain trapped within the world of pop cartoons.
Ultimately, they are not a threat to Ghost Dog who
already knows their every move and thought. He is
threatened only by his self-imposed allegiance to his
master, Louie (John Tormey). Jarmusch hints
at the politicisation of the black neighbourhood: the
decaying, deserted streets that Ghost Dog solemnly
regards; the redneck bear-hunters he comes across (the
only other white characters besides the mobsters which he
converses with); the flashback to a violent situation
between Ghost Dog and young white men, which is
apparently race-based; and the allegorical meaning of
Raymond (Isaach de Bankolé), Ghost Dog and
Pearline's uniform agreement that chocolate is their
favourite flavour, with Raymond adding: "Even if vanilla
is the most popular flavour in the world, the fact is
chocolate is still the best". In true Jarmuschian style,
mise en scène and story in Ghost Dog
are not constructed so as to be definite but, rather,
always suggestive and in flux, to the extent that we are
invited to superimpose our own narratives to provide
histories and explanations. For example, Ghost Dog's
strict adherence to the samurai code as both a form of
defence and a philosophy of life could be seen as his
response to the racial beating that occurred several
years earlier; equipped with such a philosophy of life
and defence techniques he naturally assumes a superior
position in relation to the troubled world around
him. The
materiality of text haunts Ghost Dog. This is made
explicit in the sequence which reveals an enormous ship
built by a Spanish man on a rooftop, its contradictory
nature (ship out of water) offering the object as a text.
Many details are shaped to this end: the trio of rappers
dressed in brilliant red who salute him; an old man with
shopping bags who suddenly morphs into a dexterous
kung-fu fighter; the rappers in the park; and the
spareness of the environment generally except for
discrete objects (a little girl in the park, a dog, a
flying bird, street rappers). Jarmusch
handles the theme of empowerment through cultural
appropriation with great subtlety and poignancy. In both
Dead man and Ghost Dog, eighteenth century
poetry provides a metaphysical understanding of the
world. And in both films, the characters who are the
vessels for such poetry, are also spiritual messengers.
In Ghost Dog, it is to Pearline that Ghost Dog
imparts such knowledge. Their conversations in the park
are disarming in their directness and simplicity. And
their likeness is suggested subtly -- they both carry
briefcases, both enjoy books, both agree on which story
from Rashomon is the best. The theme of
transmutation is embodied in Ghost Dog's status as an
omnipresent, omniscient character, in terms of his
relation to the natural world and the affinity he shares
with birds, a dog, a bear. It is as though all these
objects of nature exist on the same plane, each a
transmuted form of the other. The ultimate
act of transference/transmutation between them comes when
Ghost Dog gives Pearline the Hagakure text before
succumbing to his death. In the closing sequence of
Pearline reading the book, she sits on the kitchen floor,
her mother's legs shuffling around her as she gently
requests her daughter to read elsewhere. Looking to the
light, Pearline sees an image of Ghost Dog sitting at the
park bench, his spiritual form finally realised. The
scene closes with a quote from Hagakure read out
by Pearline that the "end is important in all things". In
this sequence, the small, everyday moment is touched by
something transcendental. In defining
its characters in terms of the cultural styles,
traditions and habits they align themselves with,
Ghost Dog suggests both that identities in the
modern world are always defined in relation to cultural
objects and commodities (with all sorts of radical
configurations possible) and, more profoundly, that such
objects and commodities can be visionary and
empowering. In many ways,
Ghost Dog is a companion piece to Dead man
(Rosenbaum informs us that Jarmusch's original title for
the latter film was Ghost Dog [24]).
Both treat their central subjects and journeys with
gravity, and deploy ancient poetry in a particular way.
And the death of Ghost Dog works as a moment of tragic
pathos similar to William Blake's exit aboard the canoe.
Both films explore a metaphysical quest beyond the
worldly realm (as Ghost Dog says before dying: "I've seen
everything I needed to see"), signalling the newfound
seriousness that characterises Jarmusch's current work.
Unlike his previous work, Jarmusch now approaches his
themes within an accomplished formal mode that
brilliantly eschews rational logic, transparent meaning
and conventional concepts and structures of meaning, for
the sake of a sensuous and surreal form of knowing and
experience. Jarmusch continues to boldly usher us into
unknown territory. (To
return to your place in the text, simply click on the
endnote number) [1]
Between 1998 to the present, five books have been
published on Jim Jarmusch, only one of which is in
English, the remaining four being in French, Polish,
Italian and German. For interviews which make reference
to Jarmusch's Paris experience, see: "Home and away" by
Peter Keogh in Sight and sound, vol. 2 issue 1
(August 1992), 8-9; "Stranger in Paradise" by Jane
Shapiro, The village voice 31 (1986), 16-19; "Jim
Jarmusch interviewed by Geoff Andrew", The guardian
observer, http://www.filmunlimited.co.uk/Guardian_NFT/interview/0,4479,110607,00.html,
[Monday November 15, 1999] [2]
Jonathan Rosenbaum, Dead man (London: BFI, 2000),
13. [3]
Jim Jarmusch quoted in Harlan Jacobson, "Three guys in
three directions/ 'Stranger than paradise' $120,000",
Film comment vol. 21, no.1 (Jan/Feb 1985),
62. [4]
Richard Linnett, "As American as you are: Jim Jarmusch
and Stranger than paradise", Cineaste vol.14 no.1,
(1985), 26. [5]
Shawn Levy, "Postcards from mars", Sight and sound
vol. 10 no. 4 (April 2000), 23. [6]
Rosenbaum, Dead man, 44. [7]
For a rather impassioned negative review of the film see
Ralph Traviato, "Down by law", Cinema papers 66
(November 1987), 47-48. [8](8)
For a philosophical reading of the film, which shows how
its "project" resembles the philosophy of Wittgenstein,
see Ludvig Hertzberg, "Preamble/Introduction",
Perceptual dawnings: Jim Jarmusch's offbeat poetics of
cinema, work in progress -- PhD dissertation
proposal/introduction, February 2000, http://jimjarmusch.tripod.com/dissprop.html [9]
Rosenbaum, Dead man, 26. [10]
Rosenbaum, "International sampler", Chicago reader --
on film, [11]
Murray Smith, "Parallel Lines" in American independent
cinema -- a sight and sound reader ed. Jim Hillier
(London: BFI, 2001), 156. [12]
J. Hoberman, "Roadside attractions", Sight and
sound vol.2 no.4 (August 1992), 6. [13]
Rosenbaum, "A gun up your ass: an interview with Jim
Jarmusch", Cineaste vol.22 no.2 (June 1996),
20. [14]
Jim Jarmusch quoted in "Jim Jarmusch interviewed by Geoff
Andrew". [15]
Jim Jarmusch quoted in "Jim Jarmusch interviewed by Geoff
Andrew". [16]
Rosenbaum, Dead man, 81. [17]
Rosenbaum, "Acid Western", Chicago Reader -- On
Film, [18]
Jim Jarmusch quoted in Rosenbaum, "A Gun Up Your Ass",
23. [19]
Rosenbaum, Dead man, 21. [20]
Tom Ryan, "Year of The horse" review, The
Sunday age, 8/11/98. [21]
Ryan, "Year of The horse". [22]
This notion of viewing Jarmusch's films as forms of
poetry is developed by Rosenbaum in Dead man,
63-80. [23]
Rosenbaum, "International sampler". [24]
Rosenbaum, Dead man, 14.
9,350 words
Abstract
Whilst
studying poetry at Columbia University in the early to
mid 1970s, Jim Jarmusch took a sojourn to Paris where he
discovered world art cinema at the
Cinémathèque Française -- Shohei
Imamura, Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, Robert Bresson,
Carl Dreyer, Samuel Fuller, Jacques Rivette and so on. In
the various interviews with Jarmusch -- at present no
book-length biography or critical study of his oeuvre has
been published in English - this experience in Paris is
described as formative in that it ultimately led to him
becoming a filmmaker. [1]
In fact, in hindsight this experience can be regarded as
crucial in two ways: it enabled an appreciation of cinema
as a formal medium, and it placed Jarmusch outside his
"home" culture.
Existential
wandering: Permanent vacation (US
1980)
Spectacular
nothingness: Stranger than paradise (US/WGer
1984)
If
you stop the film at any point and ask the audience
what was going to happen next, they would have no
idea. They wouldn't really be thinking about it, but
would be more concerned with the characters and what's
happening to them.
- Jim Jarmusch [3]Bending the
rules: Down by law
Two
roads diverged in a wood, and I- I took the one less
travelled by, And that has made all the
difference.
Elvis in the
world: Mystery train
...the
successive revelation of the same action witnessed
from different viewpoints creates a kind of formal
fascination, heightening our sense of the way the
various lines of action interweave with one another.
By placing the temporally parallel sequences in
succession, their parallel existence, is
paradoxically, underlined. [11]
Global
warming: Night on earth
The shorts:
Coffee and cigarettes
Lightning
vision: Dead man
What
was more fascinating to me is that these cultures
coexisted only so briefly, and then the industrialised
one eliminated the aboriginal culture. Those specific
Northwest tribes existed for thousands of years and
then they were wiped out in much less than a hundred
years. [18]
If
America (... is haunted by the genocide that presided
over its conquest, one thing that makes Dead
man a haunted film is a sense of this enormity
crawling around its edges, informing every moment and
every gesture, without ever quite taking centre stage
[19].
The Musical:
Year of the horse (US 1997)
Reading is
believing: Ghost Dog: the way of the
samurai
Endnotes
http://www.chireader.com/movies/archives/2000/0300/000317.html
[17 March 2000]
http://www.chireader.com/movies/archives/0696/06286.html,
[28 June 1996]
