Dead Souls – A film by Alex Cox – Punk77 Review Nov 26

Alex Cox’s latest film is a stylish, funny, atmospheric, thought-provoking Western and a sheer pleasure to watch. 5/5

I’ve always wondered where the gazillions of films on Netflix and Amazon come from, who they’re made for, and how people find and watch them, and I’m none the wiser. This one is no different. It’s low-budget and crowdfunded to the tune of £250k, and although it’s beautifully made, it will have a limited cinema release.

Set in the Wild West (filmed in Almería, Spain), the film loosely follows Gogol’s epic prose poem Dead Souls. Cox plays the main character, Strindler (at times called Swindler or Schindler), an almost spectral, bowler-hatted man who is essentially buying the data of dead Mexicans. Along the way, he comes into contact with a variety of greedy, corrupt officials who all want to take a cut, cover things up, or commit murder. What his con is, you’ll have to see for yourself.

The filming is beautiful, with wide-open panoramas and stunning photography and angles in the style of the old spaghetti westerns.

At times it’s surreal: a widow bursts into song, and a dead person comes back to life, or Strindler appears as an animated puppet, with his dad (Tenpole Tudor) dropping him off at an orphanage. In another sequence, he’s transported into the future and recruited to do the same counting exercise, this time with the help of AI, with the data used to justify the dead in various US wars.

It has a small cast and a concise script, but the dialogue is often full of small, playful comedic touches. One example is the ranch owner, the richest man in town, who won’t give Strindler’s horse any hay and offers him a drink of foul, milky-looking alcohol, 15 years old, made by his dead wife. He pours a drink for each of them, and when Strindler drinks his, the ranch owner pours his own back into the bottle to save it. Strindler throws up on the way back.

The line between criminal and legal activity is a grey one where money and politics are involved, even more so now that people are reduced to data to be bought, sold, and manipulated to support whatever version of the truth unscrupulous people want.

Well worth 80 minutes of your time, and on a big screen it will be absolutely amazing. Now, when’s Repo Man II being filmed?

Dead Souls UK Q&A screening tour starts 4th November with screenings at the following venues:

🗓️ Weds 4th Nov: Cube Microplex, Bristol @ 8PM

💬 Q&A with filmmaker Alex Cox hosted by Dr. Pete Falconer (University of Bristol)

🎟️ Tickets: https://cubecinema.com/id/15623/

🗓️ Thurs 5th Nov: Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham @ 7PM

💬 Q&A with filmmaker Alex Cox hosted by Alan McQueen

🎟️ Tickets: https://macbirmingham.co.uk/cinema/dead-souls-alex-cox-q-a

🗓️ Fri 6th Nov: HOME, Manchester 6PM

💬 Q&A with filmmaker Alex Cox hosted by Prof. Andy Willis (University of Salford)

🎟️ Tickets: https://www.homemcr.org/whats-on/dead-souls-ctba-q-and-a-5t1k

🗓️ Sat 7th Nov: FACT, Liverpool 6:15PM