Dead Man

For other uses, see Dead Man (disambiguation).

Dead Man
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Jim Jarmusch
Written by	Jim Jarmusch
Produced by	Demetra J. MacBride
Starring	Johnny Depp Gary Farmer
Cinematography	Robby Muller
Edited by	Jay Rabinowitz
Music by	Neil Young
Distributed by	Miramax Films
Release dates	May 26, 1995 (Cannes Film Festival premiere)
Running time	121 min.
Country	USA/Germany
Language	English
Budget	$9,000,000 (est.)
Box office	$1,025,488 (USA)

Dead Man is a 1995 film written and directed by Jim Jarmusch. It stars Johnny Depp, Gary Farmer, Billy Bob Thornton, Iggy Pop, Crispin Glover, John Hurt, Michael Wincott, Lance Henriksen, and Robert Mitchum (in his final role). The movie is something of a Modern Western, dubbed a "psychedelic Western" by director Jarmusch, which includes twisted elements of the Western Genre. The film is shot entirely in black-and-white.

Plot

Bound from Cleveland, accountant William Blake journeys by train to the American frontier company town of "Machine" to assume a promised job with the company Dickinson Metalworks. During the train ride Blake is warned by the train's engineeer that Blake has come all the way "out to hell" and says "you're just as likely to find your own grave". Immediately after this foreboding conversation with the engineer, Blake is startled by the passengers massacering Buffalo herds ( American Bison ), as they begin shooting at them from the windows of the moving train.

When Blake arrives in Machine, he discovers that his job is already taken and is driven from the workplace at gunpoint by John Dickinson, the ferocious owner of the company. Jobless and without money or prospects, Blake meets Thel Russell, a former prostitute who sells paper flowers, and lets her take him home. Thel's ex-boyfriend Charlie surprises them in bed and shoots Blake, accidentally killing Thel when she tries to shield Blake with her body. A wounded Blake shoots and kills Charlie with Thel's gun before climbing dazedly out the window and fleeing Machine on a stolen pinto horse. Company-owner Dickinson, the father of Charlie, hires a team of three legendary frontier killers (Cole Wilson, Conway Twill, and Johnny "the Kid" Pickett) to cooperate in capturing Blake dead or alive, accusing Blake as the murderer of his son and Thel. All three bounty hunters remark that they normally work alone. Dickinson seems to care most about regaining the stolen pinto horse.

Blake awakens to find a large American Indian attempting to dislodge the bullet from his chest. The Indian, calling himself Nobody, reveals that the bullet is too close to Blake's heart to remove, and Blake is to all effects and purposes already dead. When he learns Blake's full name, Nobody decides Blake is a reincarnation [2] of William Blake the poet whom he idolizes but of whom accountant Blake himself is prosaically ignorant. Incredibly moved that Blake is now not only a visionary poet and painter but also a "killer of white men," Nobody resolves to escort Blake, before he dies, to the Pacific Ocean for a proper sea-burial that will return Blake to his proper place in the spirit-world. Discovering that Blake is being hunted, he also determines to assist Blake in expanding his legend by killing as many enemy white men as possible.Nobody tells Blake his past, marked both by Native American and White racism, which includes Nobody's abduction to, and escape from, Europe as a model savage exhibition.

Blake and Nobody travel West, leaving a trail of dead enemies and encountering wanted posters announcing higher and higher bounties for Blake's capture dead or alive. One night they encounter a camp of three homicidal fur trappers eating oppossum & beans. Nobody describes the fur trappers as "stupid white men". Nobody suggests to Blake that he go to their camp. Blake reluctantly goes to the camp. The fur trappers, with implicit homosexual intent, admire and begin fondling Blake's soft hair, hat, and suit. Two of the fur trappers begin arguing about who "gets him". The argument escalates into a shootout with Blake and Nobody killing all three of them.

Meanwhile the party of 3 bounty hunters become suspicious of each other. Conway Twill tells Johnny "the Kid" Pickett that Cole Wilson "fucked his parents" cooked them, and ate them. Eventually The sociopathic cannibal Cole Wilson gets annoyed with the other 2 bounty hunters. Cole Wilson first shoots Johnny "the Kid" Pickett in the back of the head for saying "fuck you" to Cole, callously saying "he's a Navajo mud toy now".

Nobody does peyote and leaves Blake alone in the wild when he decides Blake must undergo a vision quest. On his quest, two U.S. Marshals surprise Blake and are killed, their bodies later found by Cole Wilson and Conway Twill. Cole Wilson squashes one the heads of one of the Marshall's corpses with his boot. Blake has haunting visions of American Indian warriors, wildlife and other spirits, experiences the astonishing significance and beauty of his natural surroundings, and finds the remains of a fawn whose body he grieves over.

Cole eventually kills Conway Twill and eats his corpse. Later, Blake meets back up with Nobody, and they continue their journey. At a trading post, a bigoted Christian missionary trader identifies Blake and attempts to kill him, resulting in a shootout. Blake is shot again and his condition rapidly deteriorates. Nobody takes him by river to a Makah village and convinces the tribe to give him a sea canoe for Blake's ship burial. Blake deliriously trudges through the clean and orderly village before collapsing from his injuries.

Blake awakens in a canoe on a beach, wearing Native American funeral dress. Nobody bids Blake farewell and pushes him out to sea. As he floats away, Blake watches Cole sneak up behind Nobody, but he is too weak to cry out and can only watch as the two shoot and kill each other. As Blake gazes up at the clouds for the last time, he dies, and his canoe drifts out to sea towards the waiting sky on the horizon.

Cast

File:Deadmanfilm.JPG

William Blake and Nobody.

• Johnny Depp as William Blake, a meek accountant from Cleveland, Ohio.
• Gary Farmer as Nobody, a strong and opinionated Native American who was forcibly raised by whites and later given the mocking name "He Who Talks Loud, Says Nothing" or Exaybachay by fellow natives.
• Crispin Glover as Train Fireman, a coal-covered boilerman who welcomes Blake to the "hell" of Machine.
• Robert Mitchum as Mr. John Dickinson, a shotgun-toting industrialist in Machine.
• John Hurt as John Scholfield, the business manager of Dickinson's factory, who informs Blake that the accounting job has gone to another man
• Mili Avital as Thel Russell, a young woman who makes and sells paper flowers.
• Gabriel Byrne as Charlie Dickinson, Thel's ex-boyfriend and John Dickinson's son.
• Lance Henriksen as Cole Wilson, an infamous bounty hunter and cannibal
• Michael Wincott as Conway Twill, a talkative bounty hunter
• Eugene Byrd as Johnny "The Kid" Pickett, a young African-American bounty hunter.
• Iggy Pop as Salvatore "Sally" Jenko, a cross-dressing, psychopathic fur trader at a campsite
• Billy Bob Thornton as Big George Drakoulious, a mountain man at Sally's campsite
• Jared Harris as Benmont Tench, a British-accented fur trader who is proud of his knife.
• Alfred Molina as Trading Post Missionary, a zealous but corrupt missionary and businessman.
• Gibby Haynes as Man with Gun in Alley

References to William Blake

There are multiple references in the film to the poetry of William Blake. Nobody recites from several Blake poems, including Auguries of Innocence, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and The Everlasting Gospel. When bounty hunter Cole warns his companions against drinking from standing water, it references the Proverb of Hell (from the aforementioned Marriage), "Expect poison from standing water". Thel's name is also a reference to Blake's The Book of Thel.

The film's soundtrack album and promotional music video also feature Depp reciting passages from Blake's poetry.

Portrayal of Native Americans

This film is generally regarded as being extremely well-researched in regard to Native American culture.

Dead Man is also notable as one of the rather few films about Native Americans to be directed by a non-native and offer nuanced and considerate details of the individual differences between Native American tribes free of common stereotypes. There are untranslated passages in several Native American Languages, and Jarmusch included several in-jokes aimed at Native American viewers, or at least those with a fluent knowledge of the languages used.

Reception

In its theatrical release, Dead Man earned about $1 million for a budget of $9 million. It is the most expensive of Jarmusch's films, due to the expense of black-and-white film processing, and the costs of ensuring accurate period detail.

Critical responses were mixed. Roger Ebert gave the film one-and-a-half stars (out of four stars maximum), noting "Jim Jarmusch is trying to get at something here, and I don't have a clue what it is". Desson Howe and Rita Kempley, both writing for the Washington Post, offered largely negative appraisals. Greil Marcus, however, mounted a spirited defense of the film, titling his review "Dead Again: Here are 10 reasons why 'Dead Man' is the best movie of the end of the 20th century." Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum dubbed the film an acid western, calling it "as exciting and as important as any new American movie I've seen in the 90s" and went on to write a book on the film, entitled Dead Man (ISBN 0-85170-806-4) published by the British Film Institute. The film scored a 'Fresh' 71% rating on website Rotten Tomatoes.

The film also was placed 398th in "They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?"'s list of the 1,000 Greatest Films of All Time .

Soundtrack

Main article: Dead Man (soundtrack)

In other media

Gary Farmer makes a cameo appearance as Nobody in Jim Jarmusch's subsequent film Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, in which he repeats one of his signature lines of dialog, "Stupid fucking white man!"

Johnny Depp makes a brief cameo as his character William Blake in the film L.A. Without a Map.

Rudy Wurlitzer's unproduced screenplay Zebulon inspired Jarmusch's film. Wurlitzer later re-wrote the screenplay as the novel The Drop Edge of Yonder.

See also

• List of recent films in black-and-white

References

• Dead Man by Gino Moliterno
• Tubutis, Todd J., "Filming a Makah Village for Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man." Unpublished master's thesis. University of British Columbia, 1998.

External links

• Dead Man at IMDb
• Dead Man at AllMovie
• Dead Man at Rotten Tomatoes
• Dead Man at Metacritic
• Dead Man at Box Office Mojo
• Dead Man at the Jim Jarmusch Resource Page