Rating: 
Summary: A profoundly spiritual film
Review: Bleak, violent, surreal, and beautiful -- this film has been summarized by many other customer reviewers, so I won't repeat the plotline here. All I can say is that every time I watch this movie I am more deeply moved than I was the previous time, and more unsettled. My personal take is that this is a bardo, an account of a soul's journey through the land of the dead, with William Blake pursued relentlessly by hungry ghosts and demons. The movie works on many more levels than just this, but it leaps out at me again and again -- the fact that nearly everyone he meets asks him for tobacco, the vision of Blake as a skeleton, the opening train sequence which symbolizes his journey through life as a passive observer who is never really forced to take control of his destiny until he is already dead. It is a story, too, of spiritual transformation -- of learning to release attachment to the earthly realm when it is time to do so. Not only William Blake is transformed, but so are all those he meets along the way, including the film's viewer.Definitely not for the typical American filmgoer or maybe even for the typical person, but a must-see for anyone with a serious interest in spirituality, or anyone who can appreciate different levels of symbolism.
Rating: 
Summary: Strangely mesmerizing
Review: For Jarmusch fans, "Dead Man" is familiar but entertaining territory. Of course, you don't have to be acquainted with Jarmusch to enjoy this movie, but it helps if you have a taste for bold, innovative, offbeat cinema. "Dead Man" follows the travels of a wide-eyed accountant named William Blake (played by the enigmatic and alluring Johnny Depp). Blake travels to the American West in hopes of working as an accountant only to find that the position was already filled. Dismayed, he goes to a bar, beds a former prostitute and incurrs the deadly wrath of her lover - inept gunplay ensues. On the run from the law, Blake is taken up by an odd Native American named Nobody who is well versed in poetry and consequently mistakes his companion for the celebrated poet. This zany stream of action is only the beginning of a very unusual, excellent film. Famous names crop up in the cast - Robert Mitchum, Iggy Pop (whose character inexplicably wears a dress), and (my favorite of the cameos) John Hurt. The pace of the film is slow (it is a Jarmusch film, after all) but "Dead Man" is a highly original, vastly intelligent movie. The minimalist electric-guitar music by Neil Young embellishes the movie's dream-like feel.
Rating:
Summary: this film affected me more than any other film made!
Review: i, like several others, stumbled across this film while it was playing on ifc. i was never a fan of johnny depp and thought that it was going to be just another stupid movie. over the course of the next several hours, i found my soul in places that i never knew existed. some don't like this film. thats ok. not be overly harsh, but those who did not like this movie are obviously lacking in spirituality and the ability to think on a different plane and in a different dimension. not everything in our lives is concrete, predictable, or have to have a reason. some things just are. i thank those who made this movie possible. among other things, one thing i will never thankfully understand is the scene where nobody comes out and goes into his abode. technology was illustrated with the entry/exit way as presented in the movie just did not exist...no electricity back then that i knew of, and certainly nothing an indian would possess. i was never a fan of neil young either, but this one piece also captured me. i now have it on cd. see this movie, either alone or somebody you love, make sure there won't be any interuptions, and lets see what happens to your present way of thinking.
Rating:
Summary: in good company
Review: One way of appreciating this excellent, complex film is to put in company films that have similar resonances, and I would like to recommend four. First, if we assume that Blake was killed early in the film, and that Nobody's reference to him as a dead man is literal (in the context of the film), then we can think about the film as Blake's initiation into the mysteries of being dead-- a theme wonderfully handled by the twisty, shifting film, Waking Life. In this film,the protagonist is killed early in the film and the balance of the film shows his twirling education in the kaleidoscope of life's mysteries, an education that is, like Blake's, dreamlike and severed from rationality, and finally resolved in a lyrically accepted floating way.
The second film with odd affinities to Dead Man is Kurosawa's Dersu Uzala. In this film the guide,Dersu,is a pure spirit of the wilderness--a fitting foil to the experienced and wisely jaded Nobody; in fact, comparing the two is like comparing the tiger and the lamb. Dersu's contact with the "alien" in this film is benign and enhancing, and gives wonderful idea of how the European might have better engaged the Native American.
Third, Dead Man has for me a weird echo effect to Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev--for one thing, the gritty starkness of the images in black and white seem to enhance in many scenes the naked brutality found in both movies. Rublev wanders through the appalling ugliness and violence of human life in Medieval Russia in much the same way as Blake does in the American West--passively, silently, but slowly accumulating a new way of understanding the human condition. Curiously, the scene in which Blake finds a dead fawn, paints himself with the blood, and curls up next to it(or the vision of the dead bounty hunter's head with firewood radiating out like an icon)is so "Tarkovsky" that I expected Blake to speak Russian. This scene is such a twin to the one in Andrei Rublev in which Foma finds and examines the carcass of a swan-- such implied awestruck mystery is in the faces of both characters!
The fourth companion that I recommend for this film is Godfrey Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi. Simply put, this film is a rendering of the town of Machine as it metastisizes to devour a whole country.
In conclusion, I would like to add that, similar to many viewers, I was stunned by Dead Man. Many who lead the lives of pale accountants from Cleveland can see this film as holding out a quirky,imaginative possibility of transcendence out and away from the flat, pinched, bleached-out lives that the English Blake simultaneosly described and predicted. This movie, in short, is NOT about Schmidt.
Rating:
Summary: Almost missed this one
Review: I did not see Jim Jarmusch's "Dead Man" when it first played in theaters, in large part because of the many negative reviews it received. Roger Ebert (who I admire) all but dismissed the film with his lowly *1/2-star rating. Ebert was a champion of Jarmusch's "Stranger Than Paradise", so I trusted him and avoided the movie. But now, having seen "Dead Man" on video, I feel many of these critics (who may have been expecting a traditional Western) were unfair in their judgements. This is a movie serious filmgoers should not miss. Johnny Depp stars as William Blake, an accountant from Cleveland who travels west with the promise of a job. This westward journey - the basis for so many other movies - is not, however, seen as something positive (Blake, in fact, is warned early on that the Western town of Machine will only offer him a grave). Things do not start off well. He arrives to find out that the accountant position has already been filled. He tells the office manager (John Hurt) that he wants to speak with the owner. The owner (played by the late Robert Mitchum) is, unfortunately, no more sympathetic and forces Blake to leave. Without enough money to return, Blake befriends a young woman who (like him) has had her romantic notions of the West crushed. She makes paper flowers, because a real flower would never be found in the ugliness of Machine. She shares her bed with him and is shot by her lover (Gabriel Byrne). Blake is also shot, but kills Byrne and escapes on his horse. He is soon found by an Indian named Nobody (Gary Farmer) who tells him that the bullet is close to his heart, so he is already a "dead man". The two take off together and Mitchum (Byrne was his son) places a bounty on Blake's head. "Dead Man" is an anti-Western, in the same tradition as Robert Altman's "McCabe & Mrs. Miller". But the film, which is shot in beautiful black and white by Robby Muller, is unlike any Western I've ever seen. There's a poetic quality to the film. Blake is told that he shares the name of a great British poet not by any of the white people in the film, but rather by the Indian Nobody (who believes he IS the poet). The movie is very much pro-Native American and I admired the film for pointing out some unpleasant facts: like the fact that a million buffalo were slaughtered as a means of wiping out Indians (buffalo was one of their staples). Blake witnesses such a slaughter even before he's left the train. And while I suppose this message could be found in "Dances With Wolves", I found "Dead Man" to be the better film.
Rating:
Summary: The Divine Comedy
Review: This movie has great similarity to the poem 'The Divine Comedy' by Dante as you see the main character William Blake assisted by an exiled man named Nobody as he seemingly travels through hell becoming a man his original self would never have recognized. This movie is a dark comedy that I believe everybody should see at least once in their life.
Rating:
Summary: BLEAK, UNSETTLING & RIVETING
Review: I never saw this on the big screen, but after watching the DVD I think it would have been great to hear Neil Young's music coming from all directions and see the brilliant photography on the big screen.
Dead Man, no doubt, will be loathed by some as being meandering and slow. However, I'm one who was thought this was absolutely brilliant. Some would probably describe this as just the story of someone who is fatally injured right at the beginning of the film and spends the rest of the time dying - and they'd be right - but it wouldn't do justice to the amazing acting of all concerned (esp. the bounty hunters - The talkative Michael Wincott - who still manages to keep talking after being shot about 6 times, and the scary, taciturn Lance Henrikson).
Johnny Depp (Bill Blake) yet again proves what a good actor he is, he was totally believable as the accountant who finds himself penniless and adrift in an totally alien world and his slow descent from a "stupid white man" to "killer of white men".
Gary Farmer was excellent as Nobody, an English-educated Indian with a love for Williams Blake's poetry and a desire to see Blake "return" to the spirit world in the proper way. There are also some great parts played by Alfred Molina as the missionary, Iggy Pop, Bill Bob Thornton, Gabriel Byrne, John Hurt etc., all of whom added to the surreal atmosphere.
The black and white photography is magical, the story is bleak, funny, shocking, uplifting and painful in equal parts.
If you like your films full of action and dont want to think too much about the plot - this one is definitely not for you. If you love films that can be interpreted on many levels, with interesting characters, great acting and wonderful photography, you may - just possibly - love this film.
Rating:
Summary: weird but great
Review: This wasn't exactly a western, which is kind of what I thought I was getting, and it is very weird and even funny at times, but it is a must see for Depp fans.
Rating:
Summary: Strangely mesmerizing
Review: For Jarmusch fans, "Dead Man" is familiar but entertaining territory. Of course, you don't have to be acquainted with Jarmusch to enjoy this movie, but it helps if you have a taste for bold, innovative, offbeat cinema. "Dead Man" follows the travels of a wide-eyed accountant named William Blake (played by the enigmatic and alluring Johnny Depp). Blake travels to the American West in hopes of working as an accountant only to find that the position was already filled. Dismayed, he goes to a bar, beds a former prostitute and incurrs the deadly wrath of her lover - inept gunplay ensues. On the run from the law, Blake is taken up by an odd Native American named Nobody who is well versed in poetry and consequently mistakes his companion for the celebrated poet. This zany stream of action is only the beginning of a very unusual, excellent film. Famous names crop up in the cast - Robert Mitchum, Iggy Pop (whose character inexplicably wears a dress), and (my favorite of the cameos) John Hurt. The pace of the film is slow (it is a Jarmusch film, after all) but "Dead Man" is a highly original, vastly intelligent movie. The minimalist electric-guitar music by Neil Young embellishes the movie's dream-like feel.
Rating:
Summary: Almost missed this one
Review: I did not see Jim Jarmusch's "Dead Man" when it first played in theaters, in large part because of the many negative reviews it received. Roger Ebert (who I admire) all but dismissed the film with his lowly *1/2-star rating. Ebert was a champion of Jarmusch's "Stranger Than Paradise", so I trusted him and avoided the movie. But now, having seen "Dead Man" on video, I feel many of these critics (who may have been expecting a traditional Western) were unfair in their judgements. This is a movie serious filmgoers should not miss. Johnny Depp stars as William Blake, an accountant from Cleveland who travels west with the promise of a job. This westward journey - the basis for so many other movies - is not, however, seen as something positive (Blake, in fact, is warned early on that the Western town of Machine will only offer him a grave). Things do not start off well. He arrives to find out that the accountant position has already been filled. He tells the office manager (John Hurt) that he wants to speak with the owner. The owner (played by the late Robert Mitchum) is, unfortunately, no more sympathetic and forces Blake to leave. Without enough money to return, Blake befriends a young woman who (like him) has had her romantic notions of the West crushed. She makes paper flowers, because a real flower would never be found in the ugliness of Machine. She shares her bed with him and is shot by her lover (Gabriel Byrne). Blake is also shot, but kills Byrne and escapes on his horse. He is soon found by an Indian named Nobody (Gary Farmer) who tells him that the bullet is close to his heart, so he is already a "dead man". The two take off together and Mitchum (Byrne was his son) places a bounty on Blake's head. "Dead Man" is an anti-Western, in the same tradition as Robert Altman's "McCabe & Mrs. Miller". But the film, which is shot in beautiful black and white by Robby Muller, is unlike any Western I've ever seen. There's a poetic quality to the film. Blake is told that he shares the name of a great British poet not by any of the white people in the film, but rather by the Indian Nobody (who believes he IS the poet). The movie is very much pro-Native American and I admired the film for pointing out some unpleasant facts: like the fact that a million buffalo were slaughtered as a means of wiping out Indians (buffalo was one of their staples). Blake witnesses such a slaughter even before he's left the train. And while I suppose this message could be found in "Dances With Wolves", I found "Dead Man" to be the better film.
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