The Dead Don’t Die (2019)
Writer-director Jim Jarmusch works on parallel tracks with The Dead Don’t Die: On one side, it’s a fond genre spoof of zombie movies, while on the other, it’s a satire of a society staggering dumb and blind into the abyss.
The Dead Don’t Die unfolds in the small town of Centerville, “A Real Nice Place” its welcome sign proclaims. The leading characters are introduced at the onset. Police Chief Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray) is a reasonable-minded lawman tiredly shuffling toward retirement. Officer Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver) is a little itchier on the trigger when they encounter Hermit Bob (Tom Waits) in the woods. Trudging under the weight of a massive gray beard and head of hair, Bob appears crazy but perhaps is the sanest person in town. At least, he can see where society is headed and makes it clear in his gravel-voiced disgust that he wants no part in it.
“Something weird is going on,” Peterson says. He adds, in a Cassandra-like line he repeats throughout the film, “This isn’t going to end well.”
The weirdness is everywhere. Watches stop, cellphones lose their signal, the police call radio turns to fuzz, TV broadcasts cut in and out—and above all, the sun isn’t rising or setting at the right times. Some say it’s the result of “polar fracking”—the Earth has been yanked off its axis by careless exploitation of natural resources—but the secretary of energy denounces alarmists and “so-called scientists” who want to take away jobs from “our great country.”
“Shouldn’t it be getting dark out?” asks the waitress at Centerville’s diner, a lunch counter perfectly preserved circa 1959. She is as clueless as most everyone else in Centerville (and our great country). Something weird is going on; the TV is a background drone of catastrophe after catastrophe and everyone but Hermit Bob is numb, oblivious to the significance. Farmer Frank (Steve Buscemi), at the far side of clueless, drinks coffee at the diner next to Hank (Danny Glover). Frank wears a red hat with the motto, KEEP AMERICA WHITE AGAIN. The wording is as subliterate as a White House tweet and likewise loudly shouts its meaning.
And then, a hand (it’s Iggy Pop!) reaches up through the soil in the cemetery and a body clambers from out of the grave. The zombies are here, pale-faced, dirt-splattered and moronically stumbling around consuming everyone in their way. They gorge themselves on human flesh but are also obsessed with whatever preoccupied them in life, whether coffee, candy or oxycontin.
And yes, say it again: “This isn’t going to end well.”
Jarmusch’s affectionate sense of humor keeps The Dead Don’t Die from turning grim, and his warm, amused interest in people sweetens the dark theme of a hopeless future. Even when the authorities, led by Robertson and Peterson, accept that it’s impossible to avoid the reality of unprecedented events, they have no solution. The most able person in town is the most eccentric, a mysterious newcomer, the mortician Zelda Winston (Tilda Swinton), who worships Buddha and wields a samurai sword. The only way to “kill” a zombie (they’re already dead!) is to sever their heads. Suffice it to add, Centerville’s problems aren’t isolated but part of a worldwide calamity.
The Dead Don’t Die displays its idiosyncrasies and social commentary without the benefit of subtlety while deploying irony and zaniness to overcome the challenge facing any zombie movie: those grunting morons of rotting flesh are kinda dull, one-dimensional. But then, so are many of the living inhabitants of Centerville as they mindlessly echo each other and the media around them.
