Zen hit man

Ghost Dog, Jim Jarmusch's urban samurai, follows an ancient order.

Read past Reckless Eyeballing columns:

 

Read Serena Donadoni's review of Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai

 

"Sometimes people outside the law," says Jim Jarmusch, "have laws that rule them which are even more intricate than the laws they don’t adhere to.

"That’s certainly true of Ghost Dog," he continues, referring to his new film’s central character, "who picks a code from another culture, another century, and yet it’s a spiritual warrior code that he lives by in a very precise way. I like criminal codes. Even gangs like the Crips and the Bloods, there are codes within their way of living that I have some respect for."

The idiosyncratic writer-director’s eighth film explores the various permutations of warrior culture (Eastern samurai rituals and Wild West shoot-outs, gangsters and gangstas) through the tale of a Mafia-employed hitman who adheres to the teachings of the Hagakure, an 18th century Japanese text which Jarmusch quotes frequently in Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.

"It is a code that starts in a spiritual place," explains Jarmusch at the 1999 Toronto International Film Festival, "and extends to the physical function of a warrior. That’s something not very Western, you know? We always separate these things. If you go in the Marines, I really doubt they give you a whole hell of a lot of spiritual training and guidance on how your actions are an extension of your soul."

Ghost Dog himself is a study in contrasts. Serene and disciplined, compassionate and loyal, he raises pigeons and befriends outsiders. He’s also an unstoppable, ruthlessly efficient killer. The inspiration for the character came directly from the actor who embodies him: Forest Whitaker.

"Forest is very big and imposing and a strong presence," Jarmusch says, "but he has that beautiful, poignant, soft soul that comes through his face, his eyes. I wanted to make something that expressed both of those sides."

When he begins writing a film, Jarmusch explains, "I don’t start with story ever – I start with characters. I start with actors, usually, that I’d like to write something for, and that’s certainly the case here.

"Then I start collecting ideas, fragments of things," he continues, "and eventually write a story that’s sort of like a connect-the-dots picture. In this film, I had a lot of inspiration from other things, so I would try to (effectively) incorporate them. It’s not like hip hop, where you sample other things directly, but like in bebop, when someone is playing an outside solo and suddenly quotes a standard. They’re not sampling that standard, but they are weaving it, echoing it through something new that they’re making out of it. That was what I was trying to use as a procedure for creating this story."

Some of the other influences he cites for Ghost Dog are literary: the blind certainty of Don Quixote, who "follows a chivalric code which is not part of the world he really inhabits," and the moral ambiguity and multiple perspectives of Rashomon, a book that gets passed among several characters in the film.

Jarmusch portrays his Mafia characters as "dinosaurs. They’re outmoded, over the hill, and everything is falling apart for them." Their sense of dislocation is expressed by their choice of entertainment – cartoons – which Jarmusch specifically chose "to resonate or echo things happening in the story itself."

But when he tried to acquire the rights to the cartoons of his hero, Tex Avery, Jarmusch discovered the ironic fact that he "was not permitted to license any Warner Bros. cartoon or Hanna-Barbera cartoon because our film contained scenes of violence. Of course, the clips I wanted were very violent, so go figure."

One of Jarmusch’s specialties is finding beauty in the most unlikely places. Often his films (Stranger Than Paradise, Down By Law, Mystery Train) are set in the kind of urban terrain that most people would drive through with their doors locked and windows rolled up tight.

"Having grown up in Akron," says the Ohio native, "the postindustrial landscape near Ghost Dog’s house is certainly nostalgic for me. I’m drawn to those landscapes and I find some strange, perverse beauty in them. Once I spent a night in a hotel in Gary, Indiana, that was a really tall Holiday Inn. It had a balcony overlooking belching foundries and just industrial stuff everywhere, and I just sat out there. I thought it was really beautiful in some way."

Jarmusch filmed Ghost Dog in Jersey City, N.J., but was careful not to shoot any identifying landmarks so the locale could represent any Rust Belt town which has been demolished by neglect.

"That decay is kind of interesting to me," he explains, "in the way the Roman ruins are very beautiful when your mind has to sort of sketch in what isn’t there."

Like his hypnotic western, Dead Man (1995), Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai explores the way in which spiritual beliefs inform a person’s life. Jarmusch is drawn to "Native American beliefs because I’ve learned a lot from friends who are aboriginal people, and their spiritual beliefs – my soul wants so much to try to learn to incorporate them.

"So I do practice things in my own way," says this eternal nonconformist, "but I am not a fan of organized religions, or group activities in general."

Serena Donadoni writes about film for the Metro Times.