ABOUT WILLIAM "BILL" BLAKE:

William Blake (played by Johnny Depp), is a seeimingly quiet, diffident accountant from Cleveland, Ohio. His parents have died for some unspecified reason and his fiancee had left him. Because of these traumatic events, he was not able to take up his new post as accountant in the frontier company town of Machine. As he travels by train to Machine, he is already a month late. His train journey is not at all uneventful. As the train moves into the "wild west", it is obvious that civilisation has been left far behind. When he reaches Machine he is told by the works owner, John Dickinson, that his position was given to another. Poor William is bewildered, not only by the unceremonious way in which he is ejected from the metal works, but by the bizarre behaviour of the town's inhabitants. It is night and poor William is all alone. For the last time.

So far William has drifted through this strange land, being harranged by the train Fireman and then by the metal works owner. No one wants him. But then he meets Thel Russell, a former prostitute who is trying to create a better life for herself by selling the paper roses she makes. Could she be an inspiration to William? Could he also create his own future if he can only find the courage to take it? William goes with Thel to her home and they end up in bed together. He is amused to find that she keeps a revolver under her pillow and he is idly playing with it when Thel's former lover, Charlie, son of Dickinson, bursts in with a bouquet of real flowers for Thel. Oh dear. William's peace is shattered as Charlie accidently shoots him in the chest, near his heart, killing Thel with the same bullet. William makes use of Thel's gun and kills Charlie, then leaps through the window and runs.

William is a passive character, buffeted by other people's reactions to him. Even when he's mocked and abused, he turns the other cheek. They only times he does strike back is when Thel is pushed into mud by drunks, and when Charlie has shot her. He is the epitome of the city gentleman with a coating of chivalry and decency. Amazingly, despite everything that happens to him, William never loses his decency. The fur trader recognises him so of course, that puts William in danger. But it is his anger at the trader's ignorant prejudice again the tribespeople, boasting that he had sold them blankets infected with smallpox, that drives William to kill him. It may seem strange to have a passive character as the central protagonist. Poor William's get-up-and-go got up and went before he even boarded the train. Things are done to him, rather than him takin ghis fate in his own hands. And there is the ever-present threat of the three bounty hunters (which includes one cannibal) always at his back.

As the real poet put it, "Some are born to sweet delight, some are born to endless night".