Dead Man (1995)

1) This movie is not a mystery! 2) Johnny Depp spends his last coin buying whiskey. 3) The "hellish mud town" of Machine is on the West Coast - not Texas. (After all, it would take a while to ride by horseback from Texas to British Columbia where the Coastal Indian Tribes were located).

You may be asking yourself why I take issue with such mundane details? The answer is obvious - to prove the point that Tim Keogh wasn't even watching this movie, and therefore, has no right to review it. Simply put, Dead Man is a cinematic masterpiece! Jim Jarmusch has made a number of strong movies, but Dead Man surpasses the others as a brilliant work of art.

You can see by reading the other reviews that support for Dead Man borders on fanatical. There are few movies that I have watched repeatedly but I continue to see this one over and over again. Everything about the film is different from the conventions of Hollywood mass consumption "fast-film". The story unfolds in a slow and methodical manner and requires much attention on the part of the viewer. If you invest in it, Dead Man will repay you many times over.

If you liked Forrest Gump and The Sixth Sense then you can go see another mindless mainstream movie with Tim Keogh and the majority of the ignorant American public. If you need more than that . . . buy Dead Man. I'll bet you watch it more than once!


Poetry for people who hate poetry   July 8, 2002
Ann Stewart (Elk Grove, CA United States)
73 out of 80 found this review helpful

I'm not allowed to refer to another person's review here, but at the time of this writing, Amazon.com was posting a review of this movie that was clearly written by a person who was raised in Disneyland. This is one of the best movies ever made. Chicago Reader calls it an Acid Western and rates it "masterpiece". It compromises to no filmmaking convention. It's hardly possible to review it without giving away important aspects of the film the viewer should experience for her/himself. The movie is not a story, even though it's told through a story. The evolution of William Blake from innocent Cleveland accountant to a symbol (for English-educated Native American reject Nobody, played by Gary Farmer) for poetry itself; the tiny little worlds of late-19th-century white Western of-necessity survivalists, and the effects these little worlds had on Blake; the hilarious campfire scene with Iggy Pop and Billy Bob Thornton (and a third person -- can't find out who), and the dying beauty of the natives; the brutal innocence of the disenfranchised Nobody whose illusions (or were they?) propelled Blake to his -- future ... I was completely immersed. There is only one thing wrong with this movie. I love Neil Young, but, unless I'm missing some important symbolism, his score could have been more, well, varied. There are not many movies I want to own but this is one.


Got any tobacco?   June 9, 2004
Steven Hellerstedt
72 out of 109 found this review helpful

Jim Jarmusch's DEAD MAN starts on a westbound train sometime in the late 19th century. Johnny Depp is a young man going west, and in the long opening sequence we don't stray off the train or far from Depp. Through a string of fade-outs we note the landscape and the passengers slowly change. We are moving away from civilization, and en route the number of women decreases to nothing. Men grow shaggier and more wild looking. The first eight minutes of DEAD MAN set the hook deep in me, and allowed me to overlook its excesses and enjoy it.
Depp arrives in the town of Machine to discover the job he was traveling to was filled my another applicant. The owner of Dickinson's Metal Works (Robert Mitchum) orders him out at the point of a gun. Depp hits a saloon, meets a woman selling paper roses, trysts, gets discovered by ex-lover Gabriel Byrne, shares a bullet with his tryst-mate, shoots Byrne, and flees into the movie proper.
Depp wakes the next morning with a 300-pound Indian sitting on him, digging a knife into his chest. The bullet is lodged near his heart. After some palaver the two introduce themselves. William Blake, meet Nobody. Nobody, played by Gary Farmer, was kidnapped by the English and attended school in London, where he fell under the spell of William Blake, poet. Nobody believes the Depp William Blake is THAT William Blake. And he believes that he is a dead man. Nobody takes it upon himself to take Blake to the point of departure to the spirit world.
It stretches credibility a little... okay, a lot... but I found the scenes between Depp and Farmer extremely enjoyable. If you accept the logic of the situation the dialogue between the two is sometimes absurdly funny:
Nobody: Did you kill the white man who killed you?
William Blake: I'm not dead
Later... Nobody: But I understand you, William Blake. You were a poet and a painter. But now you are a killer of white men.
And I may be in a minority, but I even thought Neil Young's score - mostly playing a solo guitar under the scenes - worked well. If was by turns driving and pulsating, if not necessarily tuneful.
Jarmusch took the wrong approach with the other characters, though. The white bounty hunters and town's people and travelers are too grotesquely portrayed. A movie can only handle so many sociopaths, and DEAD MAN is chock full of them. If they aren't demented, they're cannibals, or cross-dressers (Hi Iggy Pop.) If I watch this one again, I'll use the dvd's scene selection option and skip over about half the movie. The symbolism is laid on a little thick, as well. At one point William Blake comes across a dead fawn. He dips his finger into the fawn's blood, mixes it with blood from his own open wound, and smears the mixture onto his forehead and chin before lying down next to the dead animal. He's on a Vision Quest, you see, and apparently the quest has led to identity himself with the slain fawn. This scene occurs AFTER he's killed three or four men, so his embrace of innocence is open to question.
DEAD MAN looks good, capturing the feel and appearance of the late-19th century Pacific Northwest in glorious black and white. I'm giving it a weak endorsement. I liked quite a bit of it, but I had to ignore a lot as well.


Almost missed this one   July 10, 2000
Bill Jones (Lemon Grove, CA USA)
39 out of 41 found this review helpful

I did not see Jim Jarmusch's "Dead Man" when it first played in theaters, in large part because of the many negative reviews it received. Roger Ebert (who I admire) all but dismissed the film with his lowly *1/2-star rating. Ebert was a champion of Jarmusch's "Stranger Than Paradise", so I trusted him and avoided the movie. But now, having seen "Dead Man" on video, I feel many of these critics (who may have been expecting a traditional Western) were unfair in their judgements. This is a movie serious filmgoers should not miss.

Johnny Depp stars as William Blake, an accountant from Cleveland who travels west with the promise of a job. This westward journey - the basis for so many other movies - is not, however, seen as something positive (Blake, in fact, is warned early on that the Western town of Machine will only offer him a grave). Things do not start off well. He arrives to find out that the accountant position has already been filled. He tells the office manager (John Hurt) that he wants to speak with the owner. The owner (played by the late Robert Mitchum) is, unfortunately, no more sympathetic and forces Blake to leave.

Without enough money to return, Blake befriends a young woman who (like him) has had her romantic notions of the West crushed. She makes paper flowers, because a real flower would never be found in the ugliness of Machine. She shares her bed with him and is shot by her lover (Gabriel Byrne). Blake is also shot, but kills Byrne and escapes on his horse. He is soon found by an Indian named Nobody (Gary Farmer) who tells him that the bullet is close to his heart, so he is already a "dead man". The two take off together and Mitchum (Byrne was his son) places a bounty on Blake's head.

"Dead Man" is an anti-Western, in the same tradition as Robert Altman's "McCabe & Mrs. Miller". But the film, which is shot in beautiful black and white by Robby Muller, is unlike any Western I've ever seen. There's a poetic quality to the film. Blake is told that he shares the name of a great British poet not by any of the white people in the film, but rather by the Indian Nobody (who believes he IS the poet).

The movie is very much pro-Native American and I admired the film for pointing out some unpleasant facts: like the fact that a million buffalo were slaughtered as a means of wiping out Indians (buffalo was one of their staples). Blake witnesses such a slaughter even before he's left the train.

And while I suppose this message could be found in "Dances With Wolves", I found "Dead Man" to be the better film.


A great film with a fine soundtrack   October 15, 2000
John P O'Connor (Germany)
37 out of 41 found this review helpful

Every time you watch this film, it reveals some more of its character. Is this a western, a road movie, a black comedy, surreal art or just something to look at while you listen to Neil Young's eerie sound track? To find your own answers you must watch it yourself.

Set in the late nineteenth century, we see Johnny Depp playing William Blake, a young accountant who gives up his sheltered life in Cleveland to head out to the Wild West. He has a job offer from a manufacturing company owned by John Dickinson (Robert Mitchum) in a lawless town called Machine which is literally, "the end of the line."

The film starts with his train journey out to the west and we see him becoming gradually more uneasy as the civilised East turns into the rough and dirty West. All too soon he is in Machine where he finds out that the job has gone to another man bacause Blake took too long in getting there. Out of money, he ends up in bed with Thel Russell (Mili Avital) the prettiest girl in town. When her boyfriend arrives, Blake's troubles get worse. After the ensuing gunfight, Blake flees, mortally wounded and leaving two bodies behind him.

The father of the dead boyfriend, Dickinson again, hires a group of killers to catch Blake. Also, he calls in the Marshals and posts public rewards. Since this is a road movie, Blake needs a buddy and he teams up with Nobody (Gary Farmer) an outcast Native American who just happens to have a passion for the poems of the more famous William Blake. Nobody accepts Blake as the embodiment of the real poet and assumes, because the the poet had already died and the man he sees now is slowly dying, that Blake must seek a place to die and return to the world beyond.

Nobody sets out to help and guide him on his journey. They must dodge the bounty hunters, marshals and citizens who want the reward and along the way, Blake turns into a man who can kill without remorse.

Surreal barely describes the people that they meet and, generally, kill on the way. There is a lot of humour ranging from Nobody's observations of European "civilisation" to the constant sniping (figurative and literal) between the three bounty hunters sent to kill Blake.

Shooting the film in black and white and using a soundtrack that is just a constant guitar presence rather than a set of songs, gives the film a outward appearance that well matches the content.

Many people will doubtless find this film deeply unappealing or offensive but they will be missing a movie that is as refreshing and stylish as anything else from the nineties.