Dead Man:

Dead Man is one of those movies that inspires passion: you either love it or hate it. Obviously I love it, though I'll admit that it was the presence of Johnny Depp in the cast that drew me to it in the first place. But on watching it, I was bowled over by the whole thing. I guess you could say that I fell in love with a Dead Man.

This is what I would call an "Alice Through The Looking Glass" movie, as that was more bizarre and sinister by far than "Alice In Wonderland". It reminds me of such movies as The Bed-Sitting Room, in which, after a nuclear holocaust, a man turns into, well, a bed-sitting room. Strange people and events are trotted out without any reason given. Like that movie, Dead Man is a delightful puzzle box of a movie where you have to watch with mind and heart both engaged. It's a road movie without any clearly defined road to follow along; a straight-forward Western in a lawless land, or it's a poetic allegory about life and death. William Blake may already be dead at the beginning, in fact before his journey on the train.

I have read theories which postulate that William is evil and probably slaughtered his fiancee and parents at an early stage and is now, dead himself, on his way through purgatory. It is true that William's transformation from nerdy and shy accountant in a fright suit, to a killer with a deadly aim is rather sudden and inexplicable. But my theory is that William was all that he seemed at the beginning. That he was genuinely Clark Kent-like as a timid but kind civilised gentleman. It is the sudden and brutal murder of Thell that drives him to become the embodiment of lawless, wild America. (I love the scene where William asks Thell why she keeps a gun under her pillow and she replies, "Well, this is America".) Lonely, penniless, friendless and lost in the backstreets of Machine, a town with no soul, Thell had given him her friendship and comfort only to be rewarded with a bullet in her heart. The bullet passes through her and into William's chest, perilously near his own heart.

For William, death is inevitable. If he had not died from the bullet wound eventually, one of the many bounty hunters behind him would have killed him. All he can do is go on forward, following his strange new friend, Nobody, who insists on quoting lines from the poems of the original William Blake.

Personally, I find the end of the movie difficult to watch. As poor William fades and weakens and is laid in the canoe by Nobody, dressed and ready for his last journey to the sea, I can't help but cry. Yes, go on and laugh. But the combination of Jim Jarmusch's beautiful story and Johnny Depp's wonderful portrayal of William, is very moving. At the end, as William sails on the glassy sea, he mimics the journey of King Arthur (though without the three Queens) on his journey to Avalon. Or the ancient Viking warriors, whose flaming warships are pushed out into the sea to carry the dead into Valhalla. The sea has often been a metaphor for soul's journey into the world of the dead. But the end reminded me of Reepicheep's journey in "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" as he sailed into the utter east.