Jarmusch Joy

I’m disappointed I didn’t get a chance to plug the recent viewing of the Jim Jarmusch classic Dead Man, starring Johnny Depp, at the Loft this weekend.

While the title doesn’t make this clear, this is a movie that brought me great joy when I first saw it in 1995 … still does. To me, it was really about the joy of transformation … plus, it’s Jim Jarmusch.

If you didn’t get a chance to see it last weekend, I beg you to rent it, buy it and screen it at home with friends who need a kick in the ass to embrace life.

This is a joyful (really, it is) movie about a man who finds himself in the Western frontier. When he’s seriously wounded, he befriends an odd American Indian. Together, they journey to prepare Depp’s character for his next journey … boat ride, moments before death, afterlife, however you want to look at it.

I rarely want to scream out at celebrities when I’ve seen them here and there. But when I saw Jim Jarmusch at last year’s Folk Life Festival in Seattle (the Seattle Film Festival was giving him some praise that week), I stared. “It’s Jim Jarmusch,” I told my husband. This man is big, tall and has his black leather jacket and gray hair—amazing. If it wasn’t for my then-5-year-old in tow, I would have gone celebrity crazy and thanked him for Dead Man.

A year later, I regret I didn’t give my son an example of giving credit to someone who dispenses joy and a chance to look up at Jim Jarmusch.

This article appears in Sep 27 – Oct 3, 2007.