ZOMBIE ALL-STARS
JIM JARMUSCH ASSEMBLES IMPRESSIVE CAST FOR ‘THE DEAD DON’T DIE’
“The Dead Don’t Die” in Jim Jarmusch’s latest film. Strangely, they still have a lot to say.
Jarmusch had tested the waters of vampire lore with “Only Lovers Left Alive” in 2013, but re-animated corpses? That’s a new one.
“I must say, I am not a zombie aficionado, but I am a film geek,” Jarmusch said in a recent phone interview, having just returned from the Cannes Film Festival.
Baked into that geekiness is a deep respect for horror master and honorary Pittsburgh native son George A. Romero. Strands of DNA from “Night of the Living Dead” are embedded in “The Dead Don’t Die,” which is evident from the opening scene: a car driving up a lonely backwoods road somewhere in the Rust Belt.
(Some hipsters later drive into town in a vintage Pontiac, same as the one in “NOTLD.”)
A remastered “Night of the Living Dead” was released in theaters last October to celebrate its 50th anniversary. Jarmusch establishes a similar tone of quiet, inevitable dread in Centerville (pop. 738). We don’t know precisely where it is, but the “coroner from Latrobe” might be stopping by, so perhaps it’s adjacent to that farmhouse in Ellwood City.
“The broad intention of the film was to make something funny, sort of tongue-incheek, a little ridiculous, a little dark to the state of things and, hopefully, as far as filmmaking goes, a bit beautiful in some ways, in terms of the image and the sounds and the movement of the film.
“Beyond that, I don’t know what the hell it is.”
It might just be Jarmusch’s most accessible film. It’s told in a fairly straightforward manner that slowly builds on the notion that, as Adam Driver’s deputy officer puts it — repeatedly — “This whole thing’s gonna end badly.”
Seems polar fracking (a term Jarmusch made up but sounds logical, sure, why not?) has tilted Earth from its axis. Animals and insects are going crazy, the sun doesn’t know when to set, and a couple of zombies (Sara Driver and Iggy Pop) are drinking coffee at the local diner.
Just as Romero set his “NOTLD” sequel “Dawn of the Dead” in Monroeville Mall, with the undead trolling the habits of consumers, Jarmusch’s zombies often seek what was once their passions in life. Smartphones are high on the list.
The larger message tackles more worrisome issues.
“These are the sort of abstract, imaginary things that come from a really deep concern about being in an ecological crisis,” Jarmusch said.
“We need a global rescue plan, immediately. Nature is declining at unprecedented rates in human history, and everybody is just kind of talking about what new shoes they’re going to get.
“I find it really disturbing and scary.” And yet …
“I have to say, there is optimism in our film. There is a character, played by RZA, who declares “the world is perfect at any given moment of the present.”
“The fact that we are even here on this planet, even briefly, that there is life in its diversity and [there are] incredibly strange and beautiful things in the universe, that is very amazing,” Jarmusch added.
That said, “The Dead Don’t Die” is pretty deadpan funny and as abstract as one would expect from him. His process starts with writing a script for actors he considers friends, adding layers of weirdness “to amuse myself,” full well knowing those kitchen sinks might be thrown out later.
It’s a running joke that everyone keeps mentioning how much they enjoy the movie’s title song, by country star Sturgill Simpson. (“Why is this so familiar?” “Well, ‘cause it’s the theme song,” says Driver to his partner, played by Jarmusch regular Bill Murray.)
They break the fourth wall a few other times, and the director said he left it up to his cast to decide whether this seemed too precious.
The movie touts “The Greatest Zombie Cast Ever Disassembled,” and it’s quite a cocktail party of stars. Besides Driver and Murray, there’s Tilda Swinton as a ninja sword-wielding mortician, Chloe Sevigny as a deputy, Steve Buscemi as a racist hick, Selena Gomez as the cute big-city girl down from Cleveland, Danny Glover as a local tradesman, Rosie Perez as a TV newscaster and Caleb Landry Jones as that guy who runs a well-stocked convenience store.
Just getting a song from Simpson, whom the director met years ago at an awards dinner, was collaboration in a most satisfying sense, Jarmusch said. There’ll be old friends walking ‘ round In a somewhat familiar town
That you saw once when you looked up from your phone
… After life is over
The afterlife goes on.
“We just talked back and forth, and then he recorded this song over several sessions in Nashville, I think over several months because he’s very busy.”
Naturally, Simpson appears in the film, as a guitar-dragging zombie.
Jarmusch has sympathy for the undead: “They come from a social structure that is collapsing. … And they are not just monsters but victims as well.”
“The Dead Don’t Die” doesn’t reinvent the rotting wheel, but it does succeed in coaxing unexpected deadpan and meta laughs to punctuate episodes of horror.
“Look, it’s a comedy. It’s tongue-incheek,” Jarmusch said. “It’s called ‘The Dead Don’t Die.’”
The film opens at the Manor in Squirrel Hill on Friday.