I am Jim Jarmusch’s audience.

He’s not the kind of director, nor writer, that everyone can get behind. His work is very artsy, and surreal… and often slow moving. But as I see it, it is always so very good. It is not like a David Lynch artsy, where everything is glossy and gorgeous. It is, to the contrary, often very decrepit in appearance. As is the case in Dead Man, films by Jarmusch and his Director of Photography, Robby Muller, are often shot to come across as terribly gritty within a serene cusp of life’s fragile beauty. Where Lynch is painting an incredibly contrasting world of extravagant colors, Jarmusch is blending the subtleties of black and white, letting shadows and light meet without intensity, but with somehow equally incredible vibrancy. Where Lynch tricks us with reverse speaking midgets, Jarmusch cuts and pastes only the barest necessities, making his dreamlike world all the more dreamy, as opposed to more bizarre. Finally, and most importantly, where Lynch explains nothing while emblazing your mind with erotic curiosity, Jarmusch presents definitive stories in an abstract but openly telling manner.

Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man, much like his Down by Law (released nine years earlier) is a story about an odd sort of journey. It is about the journey of one young Mr. William Blake (Johnny Depp) as he strikes out on his own for the first time in his life, discovering his self and his end. It is a tragic Western tale, and it is, in my mind, a perfect Western thinking. At once grisly and poetic; stoic, harsh and beautiful, Dead Man is as romantic as the stories in Black Elk Speaks (an early twentieth century novel), with its agonizing descent toward an ethereal fate.

"I wanna be your dog..."

From the get-go, Blake’s slow downward spiral can be taken as evident if you are paying attention, or as sublime if you prefer to simply roll with the first person streamline. I loved his opening train ride across the great continent. At each new glimpse, his riding companions grow shabbier, gruffer, as the scenery passing dries as well. His riddling conversation with the train’s fire-man (Crispin Glover) is stupendous if you enjoy a bit of absurdity in your stew. Glover delivers every line like a man possessed by his own strange volition (as usual), and Depp’s soft spoken comedic timing shines back quite rightly, off step, for off step. And that is something that Jarmusch stories so often demand of their actors, excellent timing.

To single out any one performance from the stars listed above would be unfair, as they all really do shine so vibrantly in their own ways. From the lingering bits between Wincott and Henriksen, to the skit that was Iggy Pop and Billy Bob Thornton’s camp, there really are some amazing moments of dialogue. Iggy Pop’s pre-dinner saying of Grace in particular had me reeling splendid. A pre-superstar status Thornton also really proved his mustard to me here-in, a great personification of wild men. Truly though, to be honest, Robert Mitchum floored me the most out of all the cast members. I hadn’t seen the icon perform in so long, he really was a breath of… oh, not really fresh air, but more a breath of old familiar “ways we were” air. To watch him in essence affected the air around me with tobacco and stale heat… and I loved it.