The Motley View Join other followers. Sign me up. Already have a WordPress. Log in now. Loading Comments Email Required Name Required Website. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. Almost everyone in the factory is nameless and forgettable. The entire town is covered in the bones of dead animals.
The saloon, a lively place in old Westerns, is depressing, with its somber patrons and gloomy music. So much so, Blake goes outside to drink his bottle of booze. The industrialization of the West portrayed in the film as soul sucking. When discussing technology and the Western, guns are a central part of the discussion. This is yet another destructive force in the film. They are used to senselessly kill the buffalo from the train. Blake is threatened twice by them upon him arrival. Once the movie moves from the town and out into the wilderness, almost every person seen within it is killed by a firearm: the three bounty hunters, Nobody, the marshals, the trappers, and the missionary outpost workers.
William even comes across a fawn that the random victim of the all the gunplay, echoing the devastating nature of technology set loose and unrestrained in nature. His journey through the wilderness thus becomes his trial, or spirit walk, to obtain enlightenment before passing from one realm to the next.
The end, when he is in the canoe on the water looking at the sky, is his Heaven. He is at peace and ready to move on to the next world. Blake could be seen as making his trip to Hell as a necessary journey to earn his right to enter Heaven.
The Native American Nobody is not perfect, but he is the most noble of all the people William encounters. He helps William, despite his hatred of the white man.
He is in touch with his spirituality. For the most part, he practices what he preaches. Dead Man: Blake grieves over a dead fawn.
Sixth, the paranormal events depicted in the movie elevate it to the realm of the fantastical. If the viewer makes a note of all the above then perhaps he could begin to appreciate Dead Man.
Overall, Dead Man is an endlessly fascinating work of cinema that is bound to elicit extreme responses from its audience: one would either love it or detest it, no midway affair. A brainchild of a non-native filmmaker, Dead Man is notable for its accurate and unbiased depiction of Native Americans, presenting with great subtlety and consideration the individual differences between various Native American tribes.
The deftly blended humor and suspense gives the movie an eerie tone which plainly reflects the nauseating feeling, as experienced by movie's characters, of being stuck in a limbo. Dead Man: The Bounty Hunters. An existential Western with surrealistic overtones, the movie is equally brilliant on both the technical and emotional fronts.
Johnny Depp is simply mesmerizing to watch in the portrayal arguably his best ever of a man deeply lost in his own visions and thoughts. There are not many actors alive who could have played the part with such finesse and conviction.
The rest of the cast is equally brilliant with a special mention of Gary Farmer who is absolutely sublime in his portrayal of an outcast Native American. Dead Man is not a film for the casual viewer. The patient viewer, however, would be thoroughly rewarded. The movie may require multiple viewings for a clearer and deeper understanding. Dead Man is a must watch for anyone who values intelligent cinema that goes beyond the usual doze of entertainment and makes the viewer ruminate on what he saw long after the movie is over.
It's even possible to look at the movie as a variation on Ambrose Bierce's story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," a split-second dream in the mind of a dying or dead man. Jarmusch uses many familiar western elements, but keeps throwing them askew. Iggy Pop shows up as a cross-dressing Bible-reading animal-skinner. Good guys the posse are bad guys and vice versa. Mitchum's Dickinson is a mad tyrant who communes with the stuffed bear in his office.
And the bounty hunters are maniacs; the worst of them, legendary gunfighter Cole, has reportedly raped, killed and eaten his own parents. He proves to have similar culinary designs on his posse partners -- who are human only in comparison with Cole. He distances us, replaces the usual tension and protracted action with sardonic humor and dry lyricism.
Jarmusch, who has never made a better film, says he doesn't like most westerns -- including John Ford's. Yet, in imposing his own idiosyncratic view on a classic set of western forms, pushing the story toward mysticism rather than morality play and action, Jarmusch proves how adaptable the western genre is, how it can produce great works from all kinds of weird angles. Though some audiences may be buffaloed by "Dead Man," it's a stunning picture: rich, eccentric, multilayered and funny.
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