A promisingly artistic opening introduces a somewhat disappointing film. I went into this thinking "OK, so this is slow, but the shots are nice and full of depth, I bet. This'll pick up." Sadly optimism turned increasingly to boredom as William Blake arrives in a hellish town to find that he is unemployed, before bedding an origami enthusiast and then killing her lover. The whole thing felt like 'A Clockwork Orange to me; interesting but boring (I don't get why everyone loves it so much.
None of this was particularly interesting. While it was pleasantly bizarre, it felt a little contrived, and I felt nothing for any of the characters. The story does pick up once Willy B 123 (as I shall henceforth refer to him) goes on the run with the help of an English-taught American called Nobody who is overweight (which looks kinda odd, what with the holocaust going on at the time and whatnot) and mistakes Willy B 123 for the poet of the same name. The three men sent to hunt them are entertaining too, though there is no satisfactory violent payout involving them.
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| Ya dead, man? Ya man. |
The shots are all great though and I believe this film is best viewed as a road movie. It paints a (mostly) historically accurate picture of the Americas at the time, and it does it best with slowly tracking landscaped shots of burnt teepees, railways, dead buffalo etc. Add to this, though, a score that is jarring and often quite distracting. Niel Young made it - presumably by repeatedly dropping his guitar.
The film is oddly balanced and ends disappointingly. It's odd how much I love 'A Field in England' when I didn't hugely enjoy this. The two movies are cosmetically pretty similar (and I don't just mean because they're both in black and white), but 'Dead Man' either lacks the depth that 'A Field in England' has, or it's lost on me. It certainly tries, but it often comes off feeling heavy handed. It's like an abstract painting that someone points to and says "look. Art. Get it?"
It was fun watching Iggy Pop ridiculously over do a death scene, though.
It was fun watching Iggy Pop ridiculously over do a death scene, though.
Dead Man: 44.7