Dead Man
Johnny Depp has built such a varied resume in a relatively short time that it’s easy to overlook certain films that he did, even for hardcore fans of his, like this 1995 pseudo-Western directed by indy icon Jim Jarmusch and featuring a fantastic supporting cast. Depp plays William Blake, a mild-mannered accountant who travels across the country by train to the “end of the line”, a town called Machine where he has been offered a job. Upon arriving, he is told that he took too long to arrive and thus his job has been given to some other asshole. Broke and desperate, he shacks up with a beautiful girl who enjoys making paper flowers, only to be confronted by her fiancée and involved in a shootout that leaves the couple dead and himself wounded with a bullet in his chest. Escaping the town (but pursued by three hired bounty hunters), he encounters an Indian who attempts to remove the bullet and, failing that, realizes that Blake is in essence slowly dying and becomes his “spiritual guide” to the afterlife, all the while Blake becomes a notorious outlaw for killing (mostly in self-defense) a series of interlopers who threaten his journey. Indeed, the poetry of the real-life 19th century poet William Blake (who inspired Jim Morrison) gets interspersed with the dialogue, as well as the fact that the Indian mistakenly believes the Depp character to be the same man as the poet. Obviously, this is a Western with a great deal of metaphorical elements, and most of them work, as when Blake finds a dead fawn and lies down with it in a moment that can best be described as poetic in its own right. One problem is the casting of Gary Farmer as the Indian who calls himself “Nobody”: The character is too often used to bring forced comic relief to the story with much of his mannerisms and dialogue, when an actor with a more serious approach to the role would have worked better. More genuine comic relief is provided by the three bounty hunters pursuing Blake, played by Lance Henriksen, Michael Wincott, and Eugene Byrd (and it truly is a delight to watch two legendary badasses like Henriksen and Wincott working together). Always keeping the film interesting, Jarmusch reveals his story style is to cut back and forth between the pursuers and their prey, not to mention ending EVERY scene with a fade-out to black, which hurts the pacing and breaks the mood every so often. However, the daring decision to film everything in black and white helps the artistic feel, as when Depp first arrives in the town and walks the streets, feeling all eyes on him in this wasteland of a Western town. The screenplay certainly has the balls to push the boundaries of the genre, as when Blake encounters three rape-happy homosexuals who like to sit around and read the Bible, or the shocking twists that occur within the bounty hunter subplot, right up to the end, which is NOT the big showdown the viewer might be expecting, but rather a melancholy descent into the peace that the main character has been approaching. And let’s not forget that supporting cast, many of whom are mere cameos, who all throw out their contribution and keep the film entertaining, including Crispin Glover, John Hurt, Robert Mitchum (in his last role), Iggy Pop, Gabriel Byrne, Mili Avital (angelic as the paper flower girl), Billy Bob Thornton, and Alfred Molina. The film also features a melodic guitar score by Neil Young that in many ways sets the mood perfectly. In the end, this is a film much more about a spiritual journey than a physical one, and those hardened Western fans expecting the same old same old had best be prepared…
8/10