There is so much symbolism and allegory in the picture that it's impossible to comment on it all. Reviewer 'Soul Western' does an excellent job detailing a handful and I recommend reading it.
I was struck by Nobody's (Gary Farmer) story of his childhood and capture by white men who paraded him like a zoo animal in a cage. Unwittingly, Nobody marvels at the idea that people from one city would all simultaneously move to the next city before he arrived there so they could see him again. This observation perhaps is meant to convey an apparent condemnation of group-think or herd mentality that settles on a population that has been numbed into acquiescence by popular culture or technology. A movie like "Dead Man" then, invites the viewer to consider ideas outside the parameters of what one might consider normal.
The accompaniment of Neil Young's guitar provides a disjointed, fractured framework that's disorienting as much as it is guttural, portending a finality that the picture's journey takes us on. At virtually any point along the way, one might consider that William Blake (Johnny Depp) is already dead to a world that rejected him as soon as he stepped into the town of Machine. Nobody instinctively knows this, reinforced when he observes Blake's face as a skeleton, a symbol used extensively in the story with multiple animal skulls on display in Machine, and again in the walled Indian village just prior to Blake's journey into the beyond.
My summary line is taken from a sign in the remote trading post where Blake was accosted by the shopkeeper - "God damn your soul to the fires of hell" he says, recognizing Blake's face from a Wanted Poster. Knowing that there's no turning back now, Blake replies "He already has". The rest of Blake's journey will symbolically take him back to the place from which he came.
I was struck by Nobody's (Gary Farmer) story of his childhood and capture by white men who paraded him like a zoo animal in a cage. Unwittingly, Nobody marvels at the idea that people from one city would all simultaneously move to the next city before he arrived there so they could see him again. This observation perhaps is meant to convey an apparent condemnation of group-think or herd mentality that settles on a population that has been numbed into acquiescence by popular culture or technology. A movie like "Dead Man" then, invites the viewer to consider ideas outside the parameters of what one might consider normal.
The accompaniment of Neil Young's guitar provides a disjointed, fractured framework that's disorienting as much as it is guttural, portending a finality that the picture's journey takes us on. At virtually any point along the way, one might consider that William Blake (Johnny Depp) is already dead to a world that rejected him as soon as he stepped into the town of Machine. Nobody instinctively knows this, reinforced when he observes Blake's face as a skeleton, a symbol used extensively in the story with multiple animal skulls on display in Machine, and again in the walled Indian village just prior to Blake's journey into the beyond.
My summary line is taken from a sign in the remote trading post where Blake was accosted by the shopkeeper - "God damn your soul to the fires of hell" he says, recognizing Blake's face from a Wanted Poster. Knowing that there's no turning back now, Blake replies "He already has". The rest of Blake's journey will symbolically take him back to the place from which he came.