Dead Man in Corrie
Not a corpse found on the Sandstone Quay, but the arresting, extraordinary film to be shown by the Corrie Film Club on Sunday March 9th. Written and directed by Jim Jarmusch in 1995, Dead Man stars Johnny Depp and Robert Mitchum (his final film role) in a post-modern take on the Western genre that is curiously disturbing. It is shot in black-and-white, with a guitar sound track improvised by Neil Young as he watched the footage.
Depp plays William Blake, an accountant from Cleveland, Ohio, who is going by train to the frontier company town of Machine, where he has been offered a job. Arriving, he is told the post has been filled, and Mitchum as the ferocious boss of the firm drives him off at gunpoint. Blake meets Thel Russell (Mili Avital), a former prostitute who sells paper flowers, and goes home with her, but the pair are surprised in bed by Thel’s ex-boyfriend, and Thel is killed when she tries to shield Blake. He escapes on a stolen horse, but the boy-friend’s father is the angry company owner, and he wants Blake brought in ‘dead or alive’.
Blake was also shot, and wakes from near-coma to find an American Indian calling himself Nobody investigating the bullet lodged in his chest, too close to Blake’s heart to remove. Nobody regards Blake as the walking dead, and thinks he is a reincarnation of William Blake, a poet whom he idolises, so he takes it on himself to escort Blake to the Pacific Ocean, where he will find his place in the spirit-world.
In their journey west, Blake learns of Nobody’s past, marked both by Native American and White racism, and Nobody is certain that Blake must undergo a ‘vision quest.’ During what follows, Blake experiences visions of nature spirits, but kills two U.S. Marshals. It all catches up with him at a trading post, where a bigoted missionary attempts to kill him. Wounded again, he is close to death, and Nobody takes him to a Makah village, where the tribe give him a canoe for Blake’s ship burial. It’s a strange, harsh tragedy with the inevitability of Macbeth, yet it contains a spirituality that remains in the mind.
The showing begins at 8:00pm in Corrie Hall. All are welcome and there is no charge, though contributions towards the cost of heating the hall would be very welcome.
