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The violence in the film is simply a reflection of the history of human beings. So our collaboration started earlier than I normally do when working with a particular actor.įilmmaker: In the film, the mix of the samurai, the mob and the violent cartoons seem to suggest that the film is a meditation on violence. Initially there were vague and disconnected ideas, and he would react with details and thoughts about the story and character. This time I would fly to L.A., and even if I could only talk to Forest for an hour or two, I would throw things at him. Jarmusch: I always start with actors that I want to work with and then create a character with them. You were working on Year of the Horse, and I was getting some stuff for my camera. I collect all kinds of fragments and then make a connect-the-dots picture to see what the story looks like.įorest Whitaker: We met at a Super-8 camera store. But it is very hard for me to say, “Well, the ideas came in this order.” Because they don’t.
#Ghost dog code
And I was reading Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai and another book, Bushido: The Code of the Samurai. And there is Melville’s Le Samourai, which has a samurai hitman, but there were other things as well: films by Suzuki and Kurosawa, and films like Point Blank, and books like Frankenstein and Don Quixote. I was thinking about Don Quixote, about someone who follows a code the world no longer observes, and I have always been interested in Eastern culture and Japanese culture. Jim Jarmusch: I wanted to make a film with Forest, so I needed to come up with a character. Where did the idea for the film come from? True to the film’s Buddhist influence, perhaps the only consistent element in the film is change itself, a reality that Ghost Dog stoically embraces as part of his “way of the samurai.” And while the world of independent film has also changed drastically since his historic Stranger Than Paradise, Jarmusch has continually maintained his own code of artistic behaviour-a belief in character-based stories, independent financing and the importance of directorial vision.įilmmaker: The world of Ghost Dog is such an amalgamation of different themes and motifs. The film’s genre is, as Jarmusch defines it, “a gangster samurai hip-hop Eastern western.” As seen from the multiple cars the protagonist steals, the world slides by, the neighborhoods, stores, and billboards all blurring to hip-hop artist and composer RZA’s soundtrack. What high-school history books label as “a melting pot” is the basis for Ghost Dog’ s cinematic vision: a kaleidoscope of cultures, genres, languages, and narratives, each mutating into something new before our very eyes. His aim is not to sketch the incomprehensible imaginings of the unconscious, but rather to capture the phenomenal reality of living in America, here and now. But Jarmusch actually works at odds with the Surrealists. It is no wonder then that the word “surrealistic” so often crops up in defining Jarmusch’s work. It’s a place that continually shifts in and out of focus, resembling at any one time the American West, the Indian homeland or the land of the dead. Whether it be the Hungarian cousin looking for a place to live in Stranger Than Paradise, the Italian convict escaping through the Louisiana bayous in Down By Law, or the gleeful Japanese tourists paying homage to Elvis in Mystery Train, America is a place of cultural misreadings, psychological adjustments and odd juxtapositions. As in his other films, narrative becomes the inevitable byproduct of cultural collision.
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![ghost dog ghost dog](https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.1762396261.5311/st,small,507x507-pad,600x600,f8f8f8.jpg)
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It does, however, suggest a recurring motif. Of course, this plot synopsis barely illustrates the grander tapestry of eccentric characters, twisted sub-plots, and arresting images that make up Jarmusch’s film. And in the course of this battle, Ghost Dog faces his ultimate conflict, not with death, but with himself-between his identity as a warrior and his dedication to a code that insists that loyalty comes before survival. Naturally, this mysterious urban samurai easily eludes the bumbling mob until he meets up with one final opponent-a two-bit foot soldier who saved his life years earlier. Soon, Ghost Dog is declared a “liability,” and a hit is ordered on him as well. In Jim Jarmusch’s latest adventure, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, the title character, played by Forest Whitaker, is set on a collision course with the mob after a local boss’s daughter (Tricia Vessey) witnesses him making a hit. With Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai newly released by Criterion Collection today, Filmmaker is publishing online for the first time Peter Bowen’s interview with Jarmusch and actor Forest Whitaker from our Winter, 2000 print issue. Criterion Channel, Criterion Collection, Forest Whitaker, Ghost Dog, Jim Jarmusch