*SPOILER ALERTS; BOTH FILMS*
Dead Man is the only Jim Jarmusch movie I like. Like his others, it is overlong, slow, rambling, and suffers annoying descents into triteness of dialogue. Unlike the others, its mise-en-scene is sufficiently magnificent and its talent sufficiently compelling to raise it up into a sort of shambolic greatness. It doesn't hurt, also, that its story,--the slow journey of a man to his inevitable death,--has a sort of catharsis built into it.
When I call its mise-en-scene magnificent, I mean that the film is composed of near-perfect elements interwoven to create a world of essential integrity. It has interesting and well-chosen camera angles ably edited, sets filled with fascinating details photographed in eye-pleasing black and white, massively talented actors (Depp, Gary Farmer, Lance Henriksen, Michael Wincott. Robert Mitchum!) who bring unusual heft to the usual raggediness that is a Jarmusch script. There's a story steeped enough in mythological symbology to give it a needed depth (also unusual for Jarmusch), a hypnotic one-guitar-with-reverb score by Neil Young, and the beautiful, plastic face of Johnny Depp. All of these elements entwine to pull off the feat, although it is just by a nose, just barely by a nose. A different editor, a different actor, if it was filmed in color,-- just one or two false moves, a few more unravelled edges, and it'd have been a goner.
It is, in a very real sense, a paen to Depp's astonishing beauty. We spend a good amount of time watching his William Blake, in close-up, dying. He may be dying from the first moment we meet him on the train from the east (as suggested by the alarmed comment of Crispin Glover's Fireman that Blake is headed for the end of the line); if not, he's certainly picked up his death-wound within the first half-hour. Think of it as a hipster translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. There are demons and trials and trickster guardians and portals to be passed through. There's even one very funny scene I'd rank nigh onto brilliant: when he stumbles up to a campfire manned by Billy Bob Thornton, Jared Harris and Iggy Pop, a sort of ersatz family vaguely but disturbingly reminiscent of the one in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
With Jarmusch, relaxation into the flow is imperative. Once you start fidgeting and fighting it, you may as well turn it off, because it's never going to sell you if you don't buy it from the outset. Back in my university days, I'd have recommended you get a little baked before you sit down to Dead Man; relax and let the strangeness wash across you like a tide.
The only reasons to watch Benny and Joon, on the other hand, are either nostalgic or for canon-completism for any of four or five rising stars appearing in it, including William H. Macy and Oliver Platt. Its only real claim to importance is its placement in Depp's CV. Emerging two years before Dead Man and in the same year as the equally quirky but much darker Arizona Dreams and What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, it marks his cautious emergence as the world's strangest young leading man after his extreme anti-pop-idol rebellion of Edward Scissorhands.
Do they even make movies like this anymore? It was quite the industry in those days, as I recall: brightly-colored sentimental hogwash about mentally-challenged but generally adorable people whose love overcomes all obstacles. The genre was always (am I remembering this right?) marked by the musical montage: this one incorporates two or three full-length songs while the characters brood or walk around or go about their daily lives. Catchy songs, too, including that one-hit monster-wonder by the Proclaimers about walking five hundred miles, remember that? And a gorgeous Joe Cocker rendition of an old Blind Faith song, "Can't Find My Way Home," one of the saddest and most beautiful songs ever written.
It's inoffensive enough, with generally good acting (Julianne Moore, inspired as always, plus Aidan Quinn and Mary Stuart Masterson), and it follows the expected formula, providing the proper dosages of hope and heartbreak on its way to its happy ending. It's Depp's talent for underplaying that keeps this clear of The Sucking Fen of Treacly Emotional Manipulation. It's his underplaying which makes him great, which makes him interesting to watch even when he's overplaying (Jack Sparrow, anyone?), and although this should be classed among his juvenilia, it's a near-heroic effort to create a singularly memorable character.
Let me preface my final comment by saying that it's not particularly easy to warm my heart. Things like finding Tom Hanks on the top of the Empire State Building and pledging true love on the Titanic leave me not just cold but surly to boot. That understood, Benny and Joon is worth the watch for its climactic scene, in which Sam demonstrates his love by scaling the fortress wall to swing in front of Joon's hospital window. The music, the use of slow motion, and especially the Buster Keaton deadpan on Sam's face, make it one of the most truly effective heart-warmers I can remember.
