Dead Man

William Blake (not the poet!) is shot on his way to a labour settlement and drifts into the lawlessness of the late 19th century. Wounded and disoriented, he meets Nobody, a quiet, witty and astute indigenous companion who interprets Blake's fate as a mythical narrative and guides him through a series of trials. Black and white, sparse dialogue and recurring visual motifs (blood, smoke, industrial relics) – Jarmusch literally bathes in the genre and yet reinvents it in the process. Neil Young's soundtrack sounds like ritualistic commentary. The tone shifts between laconic, dark humour and a serious, threatening mood. The journey remains both a physical escape and a symbolic passage in which questions of guilt, language and identity are negotiated.
(Otto Römisch)