Dead Man 1995

"Dead Man is a strange, slow, unrewarding movie that provides us with more time to think about its meaning than with meaning. The black-and-white photography by Robby Muller is a series of monochromes in which the brave new land of the West already betrays a certain loneliness. Farmer brings to the Indian a sweetness and a curious contemporary air (he talks like a New Age guru), and Johnny Depp is sad and lost as the opposite of Nobody - which is, I fear, Everyman. A mood might have developed here, had it not been for the unfortunate score by Neil Young, which for the film's final 30 minutes sounds like nothing so much as a man repeatedly dropping his guitar".

Isto consta num livro escrito pelo famoso crítico de cinema americano Roger Ebert. Como habitualmente discordo das suas opiniões, o elogio é óbvio. Sobre Neil Young falaremos mais adiante.

"Dead Man" é uma viagem a preto e branco pelo Oeste americano imaginada por Jim Jarmusch e interpretada por Jonhhy Depp. E de uma viagem se trata, primeiro de comboioaté ao fim da linha, uma cidade chamada Machine, e depois por um longo caminho até à morte do artista. Depp é William Blake, coincidindo o seu nome com o do famoso poeta visionário. Cuja poesia é conhecida (!) pelo índio Nobody, que vai ser o guia de Blake por entre múltiplos obstáculos até ao caminho final. Oscilando entre o ocasional momento escatológico e a bruta poesia de um Oeste que se fertiliza com os seus mortos, difícil é não nos perdermos de um fio-guia que pode ser, por ex., o tabaco e as suas diferentes formas de utilização - índio vs homem branco, por ex. Blake não fuma. Mas Nobody também não, no sentido branco do termo. E porém vai-lhe pedindo tabaco, como uma inside joke. Em algum lado li que este filme faz lembrar "Apocalipse Now", e é bem lembrado. É uma viagem, quase alucinogénea, mas a preto e branco... Bill Blake contabilista transforma-se em William Blake, poeta no Oeste e do Oeste, falando trough fire - guns. E a sua travessia do Oeste mais selvagem jamais filmado só pode ser bem guiada pela OST de Neil Young, basicamente um monólogo eléctrico e que a desenhou assim:

"N. YOUNG: (...) the approach that I took to doing the score to "Dead Man" was I went back to--the concept was that "Dead Man" was basically a silent movie and that, you know, in the old days, in the '20s and stuff, when they had theaters, there'd be an organist or a piano player who would play along with the film, and that--and you'd get subtitles and the live music and that was it. So when I did the score for "Dead Man," I had the film projected on TV screens, and I had, like, about 20 TVs all around me, big ones, little ones, tiny little portables, and wide screens and everything hanging from the ceiling in a big semicircle all the way around me. No, in full circle. And then I had my instruments inside the circle.
So the instruments were always close enough for me to go from one to another, and they were all set up and the levels were all set, and everything was recording. So the film started, and I started playing the instruments. So I watched the show--I watched the film go through, and I played all the way through live. I'd put my guitar down and walk over and play the piano in the bar when there's a bar scene. I played the tack piano. Then when that scene was over, I'd walk over from the piano and go play the organ for another scene and then--a little pump organ I have, and then I'd pick up the electric guitar again and get all my distorted sounds out of that to go with the Indian drums and the things that were happening in the film. And basically, it was all a real-time experience. And so in that...
Interviewer: Did you have it planned out before? I mean, did you compose things in advance, or was this all improvised?
N. YOUNG: I had a theme.
Interviewer: Uh-huh.
N. YOUNG: Well, I actually had two themes that I used. And one of them had to do with violence because there was a string of violence. So you kind of get the feeling that when you heard--you know, there was one theme that went with that and there was another type of subtheme that went with some of the other feelings in the film. So that's all I had.
Interviewer: Wow."

Uau. Depp, Jarmusch, Young. Um triângulo mágico. Se conseguires entrar nesta magia solitária admites ser este um dos filmes a levar para a ilha secreta. Até porque talvez te ensine afinal o que vais lá fazer.