Dead Man

Recently I saw a list of Top Ten Westerns of all time. It might have been Entertainment Weekly's list. I was familiar with all on the list except one. I had never heard of "Dead Man." Amazon had it cheap, so I bought it. Here's the deal. Johnny Depp plays a milquetoast accountant from Cleveland riding the train to a town call Machine, somewhere on the American frontier in the mid-19th century. For the first 6 or 7 minutes there is no dialog. Just William Blake (Depp) looking around at the passenger car filled with buffalo hunters. The contrast is stark. A wire-rimmed-glasses-wearing Blake complete in his city-slicker suit and hat in the company of brusk, long-haired hunters with rifles in hand.When Blake gets to Machine to begin his job he learns from the supervisor, John Hurt, that since it took him 2 months to get there, the job went to another. This is confirmed by the company's owner (Robert Mitchum, in his last American feature film), who throws Blake out at gunpoint. Broke and without work, Blake helps out an abused flower salesgirl (and likely part time prostitute) played by Mili Avital. She pays back the favor by sleeping with Blake. They are interrupted by her former boyfriend Charlie Dickinson, son of Mitchum's character. Things go downhill from there. Charlie kills the girl but the bullet goes through and lodges in Blake's chest. Blake manages to kill Charlie but is now a hunted killer.Still seriously wounded, Blake escapes on Charlie's pinto but passes out in the hills. When he awakens he finds a large Indian called Nobody (very humorous Gary Farmer) who is unable to dig out the bullet as it lies too close to Blake's heart. This begins a constant point of conversation throughout the film. Does Blake have any tobacco? He is constantly explaining to everyone who asks - and that's everybody he meets - that he doesn't smoke but that doesn't alter their constant requests for tobacco.Blake and Nobody, now buddies, are on the run from 3 hired guns, all mean and fearsome with Lance Henriksen's Cole Wilson the meanest. Others are played by Eugene Boyd and Michael Wincott. Another trio that shows up along the way is Iggy Pop, a cross-dressing "Sally" Jenko, Jared Harris as Benmont Tench (named after one of Tom Petty's Heartbreakers) and Big George Drakoulious played by Billy Bob Thornton. As a footnote you will find many of these characters are named after people in the music industry. I suspect that may have something to do with the fact that Neil Young handles the musical score in the film, and it's a dandy. Throughout the film, Young interjects his mournful electric guitar. Catch the bonus music video for a nice film recap featuring Young. You might even see some plot points clarified."Dead Man" features goodly amounts of humor throughout the film. In one scene the 3 bad guys chasing Blake go on for a couple minutes about how one of them has had his fly open and nobody called it to his attention. In another, 3 supposed ruffians marvel at how soft William Blake's hair is. "How do you get it like that?" one asks. I'm shortchanging Farmer's Nobody. He feels a closeness to Blake but some of that is due to the fact that he believes Blake is the famous British poet, whose work he studied while spending a few boyhood years in London. The movie has many jokes, some I got, some I'm sure I didn't catch.Directed by Jim Jarmusch who is probably best known for "Broken Flowers" with Bill Murray, the movie is a winner. The photography is terrific. Shot in black and white, several scenes are stunning beautiful, including one where the characters traverse through a winter time forest filled with what I think are white Aspen trees. I will also suggest that this is one of Depp's best performances. He is always good at playing out of the ordinary characters and this is no exception.The Blu ray transfer, as suggested earlier, is first rate. With video resolution at 1080p the aspect ratio is 1.78:1. The black and white film has excellent contrast and boasts fine detail with no video noise. The audio come in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. Overall I would say it is acceptable. It is nothing special and is inconsistent at times. Other than the music video, there are a few deleted scenes and that's it. Granted, the film isn't for everyone, but if you're looking for something well made and out of the mainstream, check it out. I loved it.

Dead Man is a strangely twisted and surrealistic western, not a movie for fans of western genre but rather for those who find tingly delight in quirkiness. Depp fans beware, you will have to be a real, die-hard follower to enjoy Dead Man if you don't have a fondness for the bizarre.Dead Man is filmed in B&W, not the gentle, shade to gray B&W, but a harsh and glaring rendition of psychotic visions. Dead Man also did not strike me as a professional film, it seemed quite amateurish in it's making and its choppy script, and yet...I enjoyed it. Drugs would have made it even more enjoyable.Depp plays William Blake, a man who travels to the small west coast town of Machine to take a job as an accountant in a factory. When he arrives, he finds the position is already filled, and he has no money to go anywhere. Blake goes to the tavern and buys whiskey, and when leaving stops to help out a girl selling flowers, who takes him to her rooms for a getting-to-know-you session.Blake doesn't know that the girl, named Thel, is the fiancé of the factory owner's son, and when the son bursts through the door, putting a bullet all the way through Thel and into Blake, Blake manages to shoot him. Bleeding badly from his wound, Blake skips town on Charlie's horse. Look for Robert Mitchum as John Dickinson, the factory owner, and Gabriel Byrne as Charlie Dickinson.When Blake awakens, it is to a fat Indian trying to pull the bullet out of his chest with a knife. The Indian turns out to be Nobody (Gary Farmer), an half-breed outcast who was educated in London and managed to return to his tribal grounds, but returned with a fondness for the poet William Blake. Nobody believes this William Blake with the bullet wound is William Blake the poet.Dickinson puts a bounty out on Blake, hiring three gunslingers to go after him, dead or alive, and bring back the pinto horse he stole. Nobody takes Blake deeper into the woods, believing Blake is already a dead man and trying to take him to his spiritual grounds.The movie isn't so much in the plot, but in the fragments of conversation that Blake and Nobody share, and the odd trio of gunslingers. There are many funny scenes, Cole's campfire meal, the trapper dressed as a woman (Iggy Pop!), beans, and so forth, but the film is far from comedy.The strangeness of the photography, the choppy script, the segmented scenes, Neil Young's jagged and glaring guitar soundtrack, all lend to the overall surrealism of Blake's journey with Nobody. Look for short, cameo type roles from Robert Mitchum, Gabriel Byrne, Iggy Pop, Steve Buscemi, Billy Bob Thornton, and John Hurt. My favorite scene? Cole's supper, of course. Enjoy!

Mit diesem effektvollen schwarz-weiß Film aus dem Jahr 1995 inszenierte Jim Jarmusch einen herrlichen Anti-Western, in dem es nicht mal ansatzweise zu einer Heldenzeichnung kommt, sondern nur zu einem Mann, dem alle Träume zertreten werden und der sich innerhalb einer Nacht zum totgeweihten Outlaw macht.Die Geschichte des „toten Mannes“ beginnt mit William Blakes (Johnny Depp) Zugfahrt in den Ort Machine, wo er die Stelle eines Buchhalters antreten will. In dem Abteil, das er mit wilden Gesellen des Westens teilt, wirkt der junge, eher feminin wirkende Mann im großkarierten Anzug genauso verloren wie die Landschaften, die man am Fenster vorüberziehen sieht. Ein Blick Blakes durch die Jalousie zeigt die bizarre Wüste des Südwestens der USA. Wie eine Figur Kafkas erfährt Blake, daß die ihm garantierte Stelle nicht mehr frei ist, und Fabrikbesitzer John Dickinsons (Robert Mitchum) doppelläufige Flinte verdeutlicht Blake, daß er im Unternehmen unerwünscht ist.Doch schon am ersten Abend in seiner neuen Heimatstadt erschießt er ungewollt und zu seiner eigenen Überraschung einen eifersüchtigen Westernhelden. Plötzlich zum Outlaw geworden, muss William Blake fliehen. Selbst durch eine Kugel des Kontrahenten verletzt, beginnt für William eine Reise in seine wahre Zukunft – in eine Welt auf der anderen Seite des Lebens, als Dead Man.....Der Indianer „Nobody“ steht ihm dabei treu zur Seite. Auch wenn William Blake sich im Verlauf der Geschichte unter den Klängen von Neil Youngs Overdrive-Gitarre vom Gejagten zum Killer entwickelt, der sich beinahe lakonisch seinem Schicksal ergibt, indem er sich seinen Henkern einem nach dem andern stellt.„Ich sehe, Ihr sammelt wieder Blei!“ beliebt Nobody / Niemand zu sagen.Johnny Depp erweist sich als Idealbesetzung, lebt seine Rolle. Glänzend auch die Riege an großartigen Nebendarstellern: Robert Mitchum, Iggy Pop, John Hurt, Michael Wincott, Lance Henriksen, Gabriel Byrne und natürlich Gary Farmer als lyrikliebender Indianer Nobody (Xebeche).Jarmuschs trockener, an manchen Stellen herrlich schwarzer und surrealer Humor dringt immer wieder an die Oberfläche. Leute mit unterschiedlichsten kulturellen Lebenserfahrungen treffen hier unvermittelt aufeinander, woraus sich immer wieder eine äußerst menschliche Komik entwickelt. Zudem bietet der Film die wohl kuriostesten Schießereien.Ein sehr aussergewöhnlicher, aber auch amüsanter Film. Mir hat er gut gefallen.

The film may not be everyone’s cup of tea but there’s no denying it’s a beautiful looking film with a fantastic soundtrack by Neil Young. Criterion have done a great job with the restoration. Arty, brutal, spiritual and funny.

Neil Young's absolutely dreadful guitar playing all the way through, totally ruined this movie!

Superb.I'm not sure quite what kind of film all the negative reviewers expected from Jim Jarmusch. My guess is that they'd never heard of him but watched it for Johnny Depp and didn't get the kind of Hollywood Western they thought they were going to get.

if you have like thought provoking films then thsi one will fit the bill perfect acting all round and Johnny Depp at best