Facing The Fourth Wall… and Death
The Dead Don’t Die is the latest work from writer/director Jim Jarmusch, whose previous work, Paterson, is among my all time favorite films. While Paterson is one of Jarmusch’s few drama’s, The Dead Don’t Die is a return to comedy. As a comedy, this movie is fantastic. The deadpan delivery of Adam Driver paired with Bill Murray’s comedic genius makes for a dry, self-aware, and hilariously funny take on the well-worn zombie genre.
However, this movie does have more to offer than hearty laughs. While it certainly is not the most profound or thought provoking film, it does provide a worthwhile reflection on death, as all good zombie movies should. A zombie movie by nature forces its protagonists to face death, and often reveals or develops their character through that conflict. The same is true in The Dead Don’t Die, which shows how the citizens of a small rural town each confront death in their own way.
Spoilers Ahead
We see the comic book store owner pair up with the local truck driver and try to defend themselves in a hardware store, the town motel owner is killed while out looking for his beloved cat, teens from out of town die defenseless in said motel, and the town’s racist farmer dies unloading his shotgun into the oncoming horde of undead. However, the real exploration of man facing death comes through the three police officers of the town: Cliff (Bill Murray), Ronnie (Adam Driver), and Mindy (Chloe Sevigny).
Very early in the movie, Ronnie breaks the fourth wall, commenting that the song on the radio (conveniently titled “The Dead Don’t Die) is the theme song. Throughout the movie, there are a number of other moments like this, including Ronnie’s almost-catchphrase of “this is going to end badly”. The obvious joke is that Ronnie is aware he is in the movie, and at the end he even explains that he has been able to face his impending doom with relative ease because he has read the script.
This fourth-wall breaking approach serves to great comedic effect, but thanks to a lengthy conversation about the movie with my friend Wes, I realized that knowledge of the script serves as a metaphor itself, adding another layer of meaning to a movie I took to be mostly lighthearted and inconsequential. Jarmusch uses “knowledge of the script” not simply as a joke, but as a metaphor for remembering your own mortality. Each character reacts differently to the zombie apocalypse based on their own remembrance of the fact that we are all going to die. In a way, all of life “is going to end badly”, because we all die in the end.
There are two scenes in the movie that particularly reveal the differences between Ronnie, Cliff, and Mindy. The first comes at the town diner, where a truck driver named Hank has found the first two victims of zombies, although at this time it is unknown what did the killing. Cliff is the first to enter the scene, and he is visibly distressed, but remains calm enough to continue talking to Hank about what has happened, hypothesizing that the attack was “A wild animal? Several wild animals?”. Ronnie shows up next and looks at the dead bodies calmly with appropriate sadness and a bit of shock, but visibly less disturbed than Cliff. He too asks if it was a wild animal or several wild animals (the comedic effect works much better on screen). Finally Mindy arrives and looks on the scene in horror and complete shock. She is devastated that something like this could happen, and has clearly not accepted that death is a part of life. She too asks if it was animals, and then proceeds to puke.
In this scene, Ronnie has a level of calm that no one else does. Cliff certainly shares in that calm, and is far less rattled than Mindy, who reacts as most people would when seeing a half eaten corpse. Knowing that Ronnie has read the script, however, shows that Ronnie is, in fact, also reacting normally given the circumstances. He knows they are all going to die, he knows that it is zombies, and he has simply accepted that fact. Ronnie, precisely because he has faced death, is able to live far more carefree and content than Mindy, who has not faced death at all. There is a freedom in remembering your own mortality.
This freedom comes to play again in one of the final scenes, where Ronnie, Cliff, and Mindy are trapped in their police car with a horde of zombies covering the doors. Mindy quickly panics, incapable of thinking rationally, or processing what is happening. Both Ronnie and Cliff try to calm her, but she jumps out of the car into the zombies before they succeed. Mindy’s own failure to reconcile with her mortality led her to a premature death. If she had accepted death, perhaps she would not have panicked, and instead faced her doom with resolve like Ronnie, and to an extent Cliff.
After Mindy’s death, Cliff, starting to panic himself, asks Ronnie how he can remain so calm, to which Ronnie replies that he has read the script. Cliff responds that he has only read his scenes, and doesn’t know the ending. Metaphorically, this indicates that Ronnie has fully accepted the inevitability of his death, and that Cliff has done what he can to accept death given the limited knowledge he has. Cliff is essentially asking Ronnie to help him face death, to explain how to be calm and free while approaching his end. Ronnie’s response is simply: “we’ve got to give it our best shot… but then it ends badly”. That knowledge is enough for Cliff to say “Okay then, let’s do it”. For someone trying to grapple with their mortality, sometimes all it takes is a friend who has made it further along in the struggle to let you know where you’re headed. The bit of knowledge that Ronnie gives is enough for Cliff to do his best and face death bravely.
Jarmusch does a great job of adding something new to the zombie movie conversation by adding another level into the metaphorical facing of death that staring down a zombie has come to signify. By breaking the fourth wall, Jarmusch is able to tell us a little more than the typical zombie movie would. Not only do we see characters facing their deaths, this time, we get to see what allows them to be so free and calm while they do it. The Dead Don’t Die is a humorous reminder to look death in the face every day, so that when he comes for us one day, we will be ready: calm, and free, just like Officer Ronnie
