Review of The Dead Don't Die (2019) by Hnestlyonthesly — 07 Oct 2019

Bill Murray, left, Chloë Sevigny and Adam Driver in “The Dead Don’t Die.”.

The deadpan is all-consuming. It seems to be a defining feature of the film and a political statement about the lack of urgency with which we confront our most pressing challenges. Tonally the film is rich in its austerity–the way that there are more shades of gray in a black and white photo than there are colors. This seems to be the major reason that reviewers and the Cannes audience fell in love with the film. The film script is a Gordian knot of one liners endlessly repeated for comic effect. The sparseness of the script seems designed to make it quotable, but at the same time it maybe also satirizes that quality of camp films in the process. The level of self-satire and self-referentiality leads one to constantly be asking themselves is this funny because someone’s saying it so calmy? Or because a famous person is saying it?

I might be too young and ignorant to have followed Jim Jarmusch’s career from the start, but I did recognize Only Lovers Left Alive when it popped onto my radar. I think I remember seeing that film in theaters two or three times.

I think after having read the the Rolling Stone interview with the director, I feel a lot more confident about the motives and soul behind the film. I vaguely remembered a headline I had scanned that snarkily described Jarmusch’s opener at Cannes as an elaborate decades-long prank that involved a beloved and seminal indie director casting off his credentials and taste to make a pulpy zombie film, but in search of that article, the only thing that’s really turned up was this NYT profile of the film from way back in May, which retains some of the spikiness of the movie’s debut, but doesn’t have quite the same sharp edge.

May need to see this again to make sure it was funny. Right now I just feel slightly confused and tense about this movie.