Dead Man
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“Ever wish you were the moon?”
Overview
Jim Jarmusch’s 19th century psychedelic western, Dead Man stars (prime-era) Jonny Depp as William Blake, a Chicago bookkeeper who travels to the frontier town of Machine to work. When that doesn’t quite go as planned, he ends up in bed with the wrong girl with a bullet lodged close to his heart. He's temporarily saved by Nobody (Gary Farmer), an outcast from the Piikáni and Apsáalooke tribes, who believes Blake is the reincarnation of his favourite poet of the same name and already a dead man. Transformed by this encounter and his sudden change of plans, Blake undergoes a psycho-spiritual awakening and together they head west, leaving bodies in their wake as three vicious hired killers set out on their trail.
Why See This Film
Dead Man is a purely Jarmusch trip, featuring the likes of Crispin Glover, Michael Wincott, John Hurt, Gabriel Byrne and Iggy Pop (plus Gibby Haynes from the Butthole Surfers). One of the best films of the 90s elevated by a mesmerising ambient improv score by Neil Young, shot in stark and stylish black and white with deep layers of cultural allusions, dark humour and mysterious dialogue. All of Jarmusch's films are about some kind of journey, but none quite as spiritual or eternal as the odyssey of William Blake.
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