Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #42003 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-12-19
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Black & White, Closed-captioned, Colour, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 121 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
This disappointment from Jim Jarmusch stars Johnny Depp in a mystery Western about a 19th-century accountant named William Blake, who spends his last coin getting to a hellish mud town in Texas and ends up penniless and doomstruck in the wilderness. A benevolent if goofy Native American (Gary Farmer) takes an interest in guiding Blake on a quest for identity in his earthly journey, but the film is really just a string of endless shtick about inbred woodsmen, dumb lawmen, and a trio of irritable killers. With Robert Mitchum, Iggy Pop, Gabriel Byrne, Alfred Molina, and a noodling soundtrack by Neil Young. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

Customer Reviews

Digital Insanity!
This film is a total trip. Johnny Depp in war paint, Iggy Pop dressed as a pilgrim woman, it doesn't really get more random than Dead Man!
Black and white, with an almost silent movie quality this is a crazy, crazy, seemingly pointless film, but it's great! Johnny Depp gets lost in the desert (After murdering a guy for murdering a girl...) and is found by an Indian who thinks he's William Blake, the poet of the same name. Which in turn means the Indian thinks he's dead. With a warrant out for Blake's arrest and a hundred bounty hunting scally wags out to get him the Indian takes him on a random as hell spiritual journey, culminating in Depp being put into a canoe and sent off the edge of a waterfall. It's a mental film and left me with a complete sense of confusion, but in the positive I've-got-to-watch-that-film-until-I-get-it kind of confusion : ) And Johnny's really hot in his wee bowler hat and spectacles!!

... inspired and by William Blake & by the wisdom of Nobody.
Most viewers rate this film 4-5 star as it should be ... many of the words and sentences that Nobody (the Indian who escorts William Blake to his death) are improvised (& sometimes direct) quotes of William Blake, the English (early 19th century) poet.

For example a quote that repeats itself at intervals between Nobody and William Blake...

"Every morning and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night."

... is from Blakes "Auguries of Innocence."

And there are several other places where Blake is quoted in the film.

Some of the reviews indicate they found the text/atmosphere in the film invocative (as Blakes poetry can be) -- without giving indication that they know Blake...

There is one review that seemed to not "get it" ...and it was Tom Keogh's, the Amazon.com reviewer. But this sometimes can happen ... actually viewing the film would probably change his opinion...

The Thinking (Wo)man's film
What a fantastic film!!! The opening sequence is magnificent with the long train journey which enables you to truly sense the distance travelled by the changing passengers on board. William Blake "fits in" to begin with, gradually turning into a very obvious "outsider"...very cleverly done. If all you are interested is action action action and can't cope with silence in a film, you probably won't enjoy this ... there is action aplenty in places, but it's more a comment on the character's changing fortune and personality than a gratuitous need to blow people away. The crux of the film, for me, is in the ultimate message that if you tell someone they ARE something for long enough...they become it. In addition to this, it points out how we are shaped by our personal experiences and circumstances. Now think of all the people we write off socially as useless or stupid and watch this.