Ghost dogs

 

It's their underlying portrayal of the isolated or alienated individual, those who have either set themselves apart - whether consciously or not - from the herd through their own choices and idiosyncrasies, or who simply because of their uniqueness have been pushed to the underbellies and interstices of society, that resonates well in many of Jim Jarmusch's films.  In Ghost Dog (1999), Forest Whitaker's character, a mysterious gun for hire who has been secretly lending his services to the mob, has added another layer of separation from fellow human beings with his single-minded devotion to the ancient warrior's code of the samurai.  An anachronism that gives this person's being a sense of solidity, coherence, and meaning while tagging him as incomprehensibly weird, especially to these mafiosi bosses who couldn't make heads or tails of the Ghost Dog's way of sending and receiving messages via pigeons, nor of his strange appellation (the only things that they could dig out from their field of experience which come close to it are the Native American Indians' totemic names and the equally distinctive titles of African-American rappers).  Ghost Dog sounding like Sitting Bull or Snoop Doggy Dogg.

Yet, amazingly, these isolated and alienated individuals seem to find each other as well in Jarmusch's work.  In the movie Paterson (2016), this New Jersey poet-cum-bus driver played by Adam Driver had encounters with a teenage poetess who has written this exquisite piece about her experience of an ordinary rainy day, and with a visiting Japanese poet who gave him a blank notebook on which to compose new poems.  In the film Dead Man (1995), the fugitive William Blake character portrayed by Johnny Depp crossed paths with Nobody, played by Gary Farmer, a Native American Indian who has been rejected by both the Euro-American colonizers and his own indigenous communities.  In Ghost Dog, Whitaker's character's best friend is a French ice cream vendor who doesn't speak a word of English - their only mode of communication is an on-going game of chess.  Ghost Dog meets a fellow book lover in a girl at the park, and lends her his copy of Rashomon which he took from the site of his last assassination job.  And then there's the other urban samurai character with whom Ghost Dog exchanges cryptic greetings on the street.

"Power, equality."  "Always see everything."  The exchange reminds one of how those who strive to get away as far as possible from the disorienting noise of crowds or gatherings, who pursue instead some form of sustained stillness, inward focus, and sharper awareness of mundane and repetitive experiences, could often be labeled also as weird, their behavior sometimes despised as being snobbish, elitist, and even anti-social.  And so, they are often counted among these other estranged people in society.  Like ghost dogs squirming their ways through the lives of the pack.  Reminds one also of Herman Hesse's novel Steppenwolf - the dogs of the steppes, who ever so desire to be part of their more domesticated counterparts and enjoy all the benefits from living with their human masters, but who just can't seem to fit into it.  Something that is more deeply ingrained in their wild nature kicks in, and they are suddenly done with the human world.  Towards the end of the film Ghost Dog, Whitaker's character, having turned against his own retainer and the latter's criminal gang, consciously took the path of a warrior's violent end.