"Seriousness" in fiction ...

[Dave Monroe]

>From Jonathan Rosenbaum, Dead Man (London: BFI, 2000),
Ch. 8, "Closure," pp. 81-82 ...

"The end is important in all things."
   Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure: The Book of the
Samurai (quoted in Ghost Dog)

"When we speak of 'seriousness' in fiction ultimately
we are talking about an attitude toward death."
   Thomas Pynchon ["Introduction" to Slow Leaner]

"One doesn't ordinarily think of Jarmusch as a
religious fil-maker, but it might be argued that all
his films have a spiritual as well as philosophical
dimension.  However one interprets Dead Man, it's
difficult not to read it as some sort of apocalyptic
statement--not only because intimations about
genocidal loss inform it at every turn, but also
because just about every character in it we're able to
care about dies before the end ....

"Whether or not Dead Man can actually be categorised
as millenial, it certainly calls to mind that mode--if
only because its journey back in historical time also
suggests a certain forward motion evocative of science
fiction, and because the overall movement in both
directions suggests something terminal about the
direction of the narrative itself.  For a movie that
begins and ends in metaphor, it's a logical
progression.Describing a voyage to the furthest point
west, running parallel to a death trip that in
Nobody's terms is also a return to origins, the film
ends with a wide expanse of cavernous sky and ocean
conceived as an empty stage.  If there's anything like
a curtain speech, we have to deliuver it ourselves
...."

Now, everybody--


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