Open Cinema

The Critics' Picks in the New York Times today is Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man, a film I have not seen but would very much like to. Maybe I'll rent it later. This 1995 take on the American old west appears to attempt a more authentic portrayal of the times than the typical Hollywood movie about America's nineteenth century.

I'm curious as to how I missed this one. I usually pay attention to Jarmusch, a great filmmaker and disciple of independent cinema. Like John Sayles, he's famous for grabbing hold of his projects and locking them down within the parameters of his own vision, not some money manager's formulaic checklist of movie making principles, which is the habit of Hollywood.

Jarmusch and Sayles have mainly kept the faith in an era where it seems to be more and more difficult to complete a project on your own terms in the movie biz. The brilliant Coen brothers have managed to cross the aesthetic divide between Hollywood and independence, but they are not normative. They're simply overwhelmingly talented and original.

Jarmusch and Sayles always had the same organic wisdom. It's hard to tell why the Coens managed to play the game with more lucrative results, not that they reap the harvest like James Cameron, whose movies bore the piss out of me. They're just solid, tell funny and unique stories, edit with astonishing flair, and write great scripts that they let actors play with within the movie by keeping their minds open to on-set magic.

Jarmusch and Sayles do it as well as the Coens, but it appears personalities and business acumen and much else is the difference. Mmmmmm.

The premise and desire for authenticity in Dead Man reminds me of one of my favorite movies of the seventies, America's fertile and much missed glory days of film production. That is Michael J. Pollard's portrayal of Billy the Kid, in Dirty Little Billy. Take your rain gear and galoshes if you ever go to see this movie. It actually rains throughout the movie and things get plenty muddy, and Billy the Kid is a psychopath, just as he was in real life.

P.S., I just noticed the links don't work here, and I'm not rewriting them. The Times wants your subscription, evidently. Sorry about that!



TS