Jonathan Rosenbaum,
Dead Man.
London: BFI Publishing, 2000.
ISBN: 0 85170 806 4 (pb)
96pp
A$24.95
(Review copy supplied by Peribo: Distributors of Fine Books)
Uploaded 1 December 2001
“The joy of reading: Jonathan Rosenbaum’s Dead Man.”
…it seems to me that formal innovation is often a matter of finding ways to discover and articulate new kinds of content, to say things that otherwise couldn’t be said, find things that otherwise couldn’t be found….[1]
When it was first released, Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (US/Germany/Japan 1995) confounded the majority of audiences and critics alike. There was no doubt that this eccentric and disturbing reworking of the Western genre signalled a new phase in Jarmusch’s career and likewise there is little doubt that there exists no finer analysis of the film than that by Jonathan Rosenbaum in Dead Man, a recent instalment to the BFI Modern classics series. Rosenbaum’s book is exceptional in the way it comes to grips with and illuminates various aspects of what is a very complex and challenging film, the way it presents its elaborate arguments with a style of writing marked by ease and lucidity and the expansive form the book adopts so that short meditations on a range of topics sit alongside longer, fully developed ideas.
One thing Rosenbaum’s Dead Man exemplifies is the vital and innovative role played by the BFI’s Modern classics series in providing a forum for in-depth critical discussion of contemporary films crowned as “classics”. The series enables readers to revisit and gain some critical “hold” on films that are part of our time, so to speak, and to provide insight into current preoccupations of contemporary cinema and culture. Rosenbaum ended his review of Dead Man for the Chicago Reader in 1996 by claiming that it is “as important as any new American movie I’ve seen in the 90s”[2] . A claim that, in hindsight, holds true for the entire decade. Dead Man revised the Western genre to comment on America’s history and, consequently its present, via an aesthetic that seemed more sensual, heightened and mythical than anything before in Jarmusch’s oeuvre. Rosenbaum’s study is invaluable in fully appreciating the radical project of this film and its unique form.
In many ways, Dead Man finds its perfect exponent in Rosenbaum, one of the few critics who has not only remained committed to grasping the politics of movie marketing, distribution and critical reception but also to an ideal of film culture that combines “a sensitivity to the arts, to philosophy, politics, and literature (…) being very existentially committed to what’s happening”[3] Consequently, this partly accounts for the richness of his film criticism: its willingness to better see and understand the world through film whilst remaining sensitive to each realm, that is, combining a perceptiveness and attention to detail of the cinema (including an awareness of film history and stylistic traditions), literature and the other arts, with an equal commitment to conceptualising the world outside. Rosenbaum’s polemical critique of American film studios and their intricate manipulation of the press and, in turn, the public is regularly a feature of his writing at the Chicago Reader and is more fully discussed in his most recent book Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Conspire to Limit What Films We Can See (Chicago: A Capella Press, 2000). His gesture of highlighting America’s tendency toward “isolationalism” is radical precisely because it is made within a context of complacency. And so, Rosenbaum’s interests and background ensure a sensitivity and openness toward a film like Dead Man that “speaks” from a position similarly “outside” and “critical” toward conventional assumptions and givens about America’s history and its ruling ideologies. In fact, both Rosenbaum and Jarmusch are similar in terms of the way their attitudes and critical distance to mainstream American processes like the media inform aspects of their work. But this is just one reason for the success of this book; another is Rosenbaum’s level of analysis and insight, and his unique gift for writing. For a film which I consider to be very powerful in its impact yet simultaneously elusive in meaning, Rosenbaum’s style is never heavy-handed or didactic but always accessible, fluid, and expansive.
Rosenbaum’s is the first book on Jarmusch to appear in English. To date, the remaining four are published in French, Polish, Italian and German – evidence of the capacity of Jarmusch’s cinema to address an international audience. The book grows out of two previously published pieces: his essayist review of the film in the Chicago Reader and a subsequent interview with Jarmusch for Cineaste [4] . His argument that Dead Man is a realisation of the “Acid Western” and his “notes” on the film’s “formal aspects” from the review are extended in the book. In addition, the interview with Jarmusch is updated and appears intermittently. The overall result is a wonderful and eclectic array of elements and voices.
In terms of critical literature on Jarmusch available in English, Rosenbaum’s book makes more than a significant contribution. As well as a detailed study of Dead Man, it is also a sustained reflection on Jarmusch as an auteur and offers some insightful observations on key formal and thematic aspects of his cinema. For example, Rosenbaum’s discussion of Jarmusch as influenced more by poetry than prose in his cinematic storytelling (not surprising given Jarmusch left his hometown, Akron, to become a poet) astutely identifies the formal logic that informs Jarmusch’s cinema. And his insights into Jarmusch’s thematic preoccupations are compelling. That he’s apt at capturing these in a sentence is evident in the following: “Investing most of his energy in character rather than story, he returns repeatedly to the notion of looking at the same thing in different ways – or looking at different things the same way”. (13) Furthermore, Rosenbaum’s argument for discussing certain films as “literary” or “poetic” in their structure (part of the “Frontier poetry” chapter) is fascinating and points to a rich area of formal analysis.
Dead Man has a mosaic-like form, with eight chapters in total ranging from brief reflections on key motifs and aspects of the film (“On tobacco”, “On violence”, “On music”) to extended analyses (“Jim Jarmusch as American independent, Dead Man as deal-breaker”, “On the acid western”, “Frontier poetry”). Like Rosenbaum’s earlier essay “Alain Resnais and MÉLO” from Placing Movies: The Practice of Film Criticism, the form the study takes is an intricate part of the analysis itself, an acknowledgement that, speaking about Resnais’ Mélo but which could equally apply to Dead Man, the film “needs to be seen from several different vantage points if one is to fully appreciate its shapeliness”.[5] As in previous Jarmusch films, in Dead Man certain repeated details and motifs operate both parallel to, and comment ironically on, the main action. In one chapter, Rosenbaum considers the film’s running gag on tobacco; and the nature of his reflection is refreshingly open-ended, drawing lines of thought on the topic through diverse elements (an extended prefatory quote, interview excerpt with Jarmusch, his own interpretation) that subtly point to the object’s encoded cultural significance in the film. Perhaps some side mention of Jarmusch’s ongoing concern with smoking as evident in his Coffee and Cigarettes shorts series would have been apt here, although the very fact that a chapter is devoted to what is essentially a “running gag” reveals this book’s ability to respond to the “shapeliness” of the film.
In a similarly brief chapter titled “On violence” Rosenbaum pursues his reading of another specific aspect of the film – its portrayal of violence – though here revealing the “intentional fallacy” of his claim since Jarmusch’s attitude toward violence in Dead Man is specific to that film only and doesn’t inform his subsequent feature Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (France/Germany/Japan/US 1999). And the integral role played by Neil Young’s score in the film’s sense of rhythm and tone is paid just attention in the chapter “On music”, mixing formal analysis with descriptions of the music to an outline of the film’s musical references intended by Jarmusch. This fluidity in Rosenbaum’s analysis is a breath of fresh air. And overall the book’s mosaic quality, fitting for a film with many diverse aspects and themes, ensures a highly enjoyable and rewarding reading experience.
The first chapter of the book, “Jim Jarmusch as American Independent, Dead Man as Deal-Breaker”, and one of the longest, is a masterful introduction, presenting a range of complex, highly perceptive arguments on the film’s radical project with elegance and clarity. At the outset, Rosenbaum states upfront his long-time, personal knowledge of Jarmusch and his opinion of his career pre-Dead Man. Here, Rosenbaum’s frustration with Jarmusch as a “minimalist entertainer” leads to an excellent discussion of how Dead Man “changed all that”. (11) Although the book is primarily a study of a single film, Rosenbaum considers Dead Man within the context of Jarmusch’s previous films, arguing that it is “both a quantum leap and, at the same time, a logical step in relation to Jarmusch’s earlier work”. (11)
The two other related arguments he explores in this chapter are the changing perception of “independence” over the last 15 years and Jarmusch within this context, and an analysis of Dead Man’s “political and ideological singularity”. (18) In the former, Rosenbaum surveys how independent film has become “commodified” by companies like Miramax and how they have altered the media’s perceptions and experience of the cinema. Hence, the model of independence exemplified by Jarmusch is no longer favoured by the press let alone acknowledged and celebrated. Rosenbaum’s arguments in this section are more fully explored in Movie Wars. However, another important reason Rosenbaum argues for the poor reception of Dead Man by American critics and the public, in contrast to his previous films, is the film’s “direct political overtones and implications”, consequently seeing it as a “deal-breaker” with white audiences. (17) From here, Rosenbaum launches into an integral discussion of the film’s politics that will no doubt influence any future discussion on the film. This section begins with the following key passage:
I would define the political and ideological singularity of Dead Man in two ways: that is the first Western made by a white film-maker that assumes as well as addresses Native American spectators, and that it offers one of the ugliest portrayals of white American capitalism to be found in American movies. On the surface, the former distinction may appear to be a modest or incidental difference, but I believe it to be a profound and far- reaching one that affects practically everything else one might say about the film, morally and politically as well as historically. (18)
This strong, solid argument is one of the most definitive I have read on the film, and it functions for Rosenbaum as the “linchpin” of his study. (18) It also exemplifies his ability to conceptualise what is fundamentally significant about a particular film and to express it in the clearest of terms. Rosenbaum elaborates this passage further by arguing how Jarmusch has proposed a “redefinition of the film audience” since the beginning of his career, essentially by inserting “foreign” characters and their points of view into the narrative. (18-19)
Since the 1970s, the idea of representing the “other” within an apparatus whose mechanisms were argued to be ideologically inscribed has implied that avant-garde cinema was the space for “oppositional” voices. Rosenbaum expertly sidesteps this theoretical quagmire by referencing the work of Native American scholars concerned with Native American representation in cinema who treat Dead Man “with a great deal of respect” and then by suggesting that “the issue may finally be more a matter of ethics than one of politics – a question, indeed, of simplepolitesse more than political correctness” (23-25). And Rosenbaum shows that Jarmusch’s ethics lie in his manner of addressing Native Americans as members of the audience via a detailed and authentic portrayal of Native American culture (from the continued reference to “tobacco” to the combination of dialects to the “authentic” recreation of a Makah village to the apparently common experience of exiling Native Americans who had travelled beyond their villages) and American history (the slaughter of buffalos and the use of infected blankets). In one of the most eloquent sentences of the book, Rosenbaum astutely identifies Jarmusch’s deep sensitivity toward the genocide that founded the nation of America, and which accounts for the film’s eerie melancholy:
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, informed every moment and every gesture, without ever quite taking centre stage. (21)
As one minor criticism, I question the opening of the chapter titled “On the Acid Western”, an extended excerpt of Jarmusch discussing the way of life of Native Americans from the Pacific northwest and the “authentic” building of the Makah village, when it would be more appropriately placed in the first chapter.
A good deal of Dead Man is lifted from Rosenbaum’s original review, which would make one wonder the purpose of the book were it not for the fact that the review’s central arguments and ideas have been considerably extended and recontextualised. The chapter “On the Acid Western”, one of the book’s highlights, elaborates further the concept of Dead Man as the culmination of the Acid Western that the review merely raised in its conclusion. This is a fascinating chapter that addresses not only the hallucinogenic quality of the film’s pace and its representation of “reality” but also argues that its project derives from the ’60s counter culture, and that it inherits a sensibility in art and politics derived from that era which has sought to critique and replace capitalism with alternative forms of exchange and value-systems. Rosenbaum’s analysis which associates Jarmusch with the “rebel forces” of the ’60s and ’70s in contrast to say Lynch who is better aligned with the conservative ’50s is masterful and thoroughly rewarding not only because it rings so true but because it locates each artist within a specific era and ideology, rather than in a social and historical void, and how their work is informed by such a context.
The richness of Rosenbaum’s book is irrefutable. His analysis ranges from the film’s critical and public reception; its politics, which he attributes to Jarmusch’s simple though radical gesture of addressing Native Americans in the audience; its cinematic and cultural references by locating it as an “Acid western”; and in the book’s final chapter of analysis, “Frontier poetry”, its aesthetic properties, in particular, its status as a “literary” film, Jarmusch as a “poetic” writer-director and the film’s literary origins and influences. Rosenbaum’s ability to speak eloquently and definitively on such a range of aspects is impressive to say the least. His commitment to the concrete reality of filmmaking and its implications for film criticism is contained in a curious supplement to the book titled “Aside on Authorship and Methods of Composition”, an important acknowledgment of the contribution made by Jarmusch’s actors to the texture of his films overall.
Everything that makes Rosenbaum a critic to admire – his multidimensional approach (industrial, cinematic, aesthetic, cultural), his curiosity, his perceptiveness and his own counter cultural sentiments – is present here and guarantees a rounded, apt, sensitive and fully rewarding analysis of a unique and important film. In addition, Rosenbaum’s method of referencing a range of sources from literature and poetry to work by other scholars and critics on cinema and the other arts, and his ability to make cultural observations is also what makes this study a rich and highly rewarding one. Most significant of all perhaps is the very flow of his writing, marked by a disarming naturalism, ease and fluidity in which a direct, almost conversationalist style is the form taken for the sensual expression of striking and irrefutable ideas and insight. In his closing chapter, just when you thought all avenues of analysis were exhausted, Rosenbaum makes a final, succinct analysis of the film that captures its truly singular nature:
Whether or not Dead Man can actually be categorised as millennial, it certainly calls to mind that mode – if only because its journey back in historical time also suggests a certain forward motion evocative of science fiction, and because the overall movement in both directions suggests something terminal about the direction of narrative itself. For a movie that begins and ends in metaphor, it’s a logical progression (81)
Like the film itself, this book is a gift to cherish. Not only an invaluable counterpart to the film, Rosenbaum’s book attests to the vitality of film criticism itself and, in this case, its potential to illuminate and extend a film’s project in an existential commitment to the world as its happening.
Fiona A. Villella
Endnotes:
[1] Jonathan Rosenbaum, Movies as Politics. (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1997), 4.
[2] Rosenbaum, “Acid Western”, Chicago Reader – On Film, http://www.chireader.com/movies/archives/0696/06286.html, [28 June 1996].
[3] Jonathan Rosenbaum from “Jonathan Rosenbaum on Movie Wars” interview by Ray Privett, CinemaScope, Issue 6 (Winter 2001), 41.
[4] Rosenbaum, “A gun up your ass: an interview with Jim Jarmusch”, Cineaste vol. 22, no. 2, (June, 1996).
[5] Rosenbaum, Placing Movies: The Practice of Film Criticism, (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1995), 190.