THE DEAD DON'T DIE
***
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Screenwriter: Jim Jarmusch
Principal cast:
Bill Murray
Adam Driver
Chloë Sevigny
Steve Buscemi
Danny Glover
Tilda Swinton
Iggy Pop
Tom Waits
Country: USA/Sweden
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 104 mins.
Australian release date: 26 September 2019
Previewed at: Universal Pictures theatrette, Sydney, on 25 September 2019.
In Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die, the director breaks through the fourth wall like a zombie disinterring itself from a grave, taking us on a dead-pan ride into a world of the undead that includes a few meta jokes about his script and choice of theme song. The reanimated corpses have emerged because, in the ultimate version of ‘sh*ting in your own nest’, the Earth has tilted on its axis due to fracking in the polar ice caps. Unfortunately, though, Jarmusch’s film is a bit of a one-trick pony and it runs out of puff before the last head is lopped, but it very funny until finally exhausting itself. And worth visiting for the all-star cast alone!
In ‘A Real Nice Place to Live’ called Centerville, somewhere in America, “something is not quite right” and the neighbourhood cops are forced into action when the locals start turning up dead. Chief Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray) is on patrol with Officer Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver) when they notice that it’s still broad daylight at 8.30 p.m. and animals are mysteriously disappearing. To his boss’s great annoyance, Petersen immediately starts to declare that, “This isn’t going to end well” but it turns out his gut-feeling is correct. The following morning, a terrible scene awaits them at the nearby diner where a couple of workers have been savaged and where they are joined by meek and mild Officer Mindy Morrison (Chloë Sevigny). “Wild animals? Several wild animals?” they individually surmise before Petersen says, “I’m thinkin’ zombies.” As the carnage racks up, Jarmusch brings in all sorts of weird characters including a feral recluse, ‘Hermit’ Bob (Tom Waits), a farmer with Trump-ian beliefs, Frank (Steve Buscemi), his African-American friend Hank (Danny Glover), Zelda (Tilda Swinton), a Scottish mortician who’s a dab hand with a Samurai sword, Bobby (Caleb Landry Jones), a comic book-obsessed gas attendant, a trio of hipsters from Cleveland (one of whom is Selena Gomez) and, last but by no means least, a coffee-drinking zombie played by Iggy Pop. It’s a monster mash!
Throughout The Dead Don’t Die, Hermit Bob observes the mayhem through his binoculars, acknowledging that the air is infected with the “nameless miseries of the numberless mortals,” a quotation from a copy of Moby Dick he finds in the woods. Jarmusch gets drier and drier as he ages (he’s now 66), and this latest effort is positively Kaurismäki-esque. It’s pretty obvious that this is his somewhat angry and disgusted view of mass consumerism and humankind’s destruction of the environment but it doesn’t hit the heights of his vampire flick, Only Lovers Left Alive. It’s a bleak outlook, albeit one hard to dispute, exemplified by Hermit Bob’s comment, “What a f**ked-up world!” (indeed, the isolated forager is probably the sanest person in Jarmusch’s walking dead movie). Faced with the political and environmental dilemmas currently on display globally, he’s not far off the mark!
Screenwriter: Jim Jarmusch
Principal cast:
Bill Murray
Adam Driver
Chloë Sevigny
Steve Buscemi
Danny Glover
Tilda Swinton
Iggy Pop
Tom Waits
Country: USA/Sweden
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 104 mins.
Australian release date: 26 September 2019
Previewed at: Universal Pictures theatrette, Sydney, on 25 September 2019.
In Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die, the director breaks through the fourth wall like a zombie disinterring itself from a grave, taking us on a dead-pan ride into a world of the undead that includes a few meta jokes about his script and choice of theme song. The reanimated corpses have emerged because, in the ultimate version of ‘sh*ting in your own nest’, the Earth has tilted on its axis due to fracking in the polar ice caps. Unfortunately, though, Jarmusch’s film is a bit of a one-trick pony and it runs out of puff before the last head is lopped, but it very funny until finally exhausting itself. And worth visiting for the all-star cast alone!
In ‘A Real Nice Place to Live’ called Centerville, somewhere in America, “something is not quite right” and the neighbourhood cops are forced into action when the locals start turning up dead. Chief Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray) is on patrol with Officer Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver) when they notice that it’s still broad daylight at 8.30 p.m. and animals are mysteriously disappearing. To his boss’s great annoyance, Petersen immediately starts to declare that, “This isn’t going to end well” but it turns out his gut-feeling is correct. The following morning, a terrible scene awaits them at the nearby diner where a couple of workers have been savaged and where they are joined by meek and mild Officer Mindy Morrison (Chloë Sevigny). “Wild animals? Several wild animals?” they individually surmise before Petersen says, “I’m thinkin’ zombies.” As the carnage racks up, Jarmusch brings in all sorts of weird characters including a feral recluse, ‘Hermit’ Bob (Tom Waits), a farmer with Trump-ian beliefs, Frank (Steve Buscemi), his African-American friend Hank (Danny Glover), Zelda (Tilda Swinton), a Scottish mortician who’s a dab hand with a Samurai sword, Bobby (Caleb Landry Jones), a comic book-obsessed gas attendant, a trio of hipsters from Cleveland (one of whom is Selena Gomez) and, last but by no means least, a coffee-drinking zombie played by Iggy Pop. It’s a monster mash!
Throughout The Dead Don’t Die, Hermit Bob observes the mayhem through his binoculars, acknowledging that the air is infected with the “nameless miseries of the numberless mortals,” a quotation from a copy of Moby Dick he finds in the woods. Jarmusch gets drier and drier as he ages (he’s now 66), and this latest effort is positively Kaurismäki-esque. It’s pretty obvious that this is his somewhat angry and disgusted view of mass consumerism and humankind’s destruction of the environment but it doesn’t hit the heights of his vampire flick, Only Lovers Left Alive. It’s a bleak outlook, albeit one hard to dispute, exemplified by Hermit Bob’s comment, “What a f**ked-up world!” (indeed, the isolated forager is probably the sanest person in Jarmusch’s walking dead movie). Faced with the political and environmental dilemmas currently on display globally, he’s not far off the mark!