Alex Cox's Cinematic Farewell: A Surreal Spaghetti Western Satire
English film-maker Alex Cox delivers what he has indicated will be his final cinematic offering with Dead Souls, a jauntily odd and surreal western that serves as both a love letter to the genre and a pointed political commentary. Shot on the rugged plains of Almeria in Spain and Arizona, this film premiered at the Rotterdam film festival, marking a distinctive close to Cox's directorial career.
A Gogol-Inspired Tale Transplanted to the Old West
The narrative draws inspiration from Nikolai Gogol's classic novella of the same name, a mysterious parable concerning greed and vanity. In Gogol's original, a man travels through pre-revolutionary Russia, purchasing the souls of deceased serfs from landowners to reduce their tax burdens, while pretending these souls are still alive to feign wealth. Cox ingeniously relocates this premise to the American old west of the late nineteenth century, infusing it with contemporary relevance.
Cox himself stars as Strindler, a spindly and cadaverous character adorned with elaborate courtly manners, a fastidious suit, and a bowler hat. Strindler oscillates between claiming to be a government official and an itinerant preacher, as he checks into a fly-blown hotel and ingratiates himself with local notables, including the sheriff and mayor.
Political Satire and Redemption in a Racist Landscape
Strindler's central proposition involves offering bafflingly large sums of money for lists of dead Mexicans who have perished on local lands or in employment. This exploitative and racist setting yields numerous Mexican names for Strindler to 'farm,' with his sinister plan being to sell them to government departments seeking evidence to exclude undesirable aliens from American territory. Yet, in a stranger sense, Strindler offers a form of cleansing or redemption by taking these dead individuals off the landowners' hands.
Strindler emerges as a proto-ICE drifter, albeit with a quaint innocence. Despite being a crook through and through, Cox portrays him as outranked in crookedness by nearly everyone he encounters. This is particularly evident when Strindler is challenged to a gunfight, leading to a bloody chaos where recording authorities opt to 'print the legend and not the truth.'
Indie Aesthetics and Surreal Elements
Dead Souls boasts a distinctive indie-budget look, which Cox leverages by presenting the action almost as a theatrical chamber piece. Bizarre and fruity characters populate the parched landscape, with dead men occasionally rising to sing. Strindler experiences surreal dreams, catapulting him into an American future during a third world war where his services are required to purchase the names of deceased Russians, Chinese, and Peruvians.
Co-written with veteran spaghetti western actor Gianni Garko, the film serves as a diverting and watchable homage to the spaghetti western genre while acting as a satirical thorn in the flesh of Trumpian politics. Its flash-forwards make the contemporary American relevance clear, offering a unique blend of historical inspiration and modern critique.
