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[[File:Dead_Man.jpg|frame]]
'''''Dead Man''''' is an acid/existential [[Western]] by Jim Jarmusch, released in 1995. The main character is an out-of-work accountant from back East (played by [[Johnny Depp]]) named William Blake, though the name is purely coincidental. He goes to a frontier town on the promise of a job, but once there finds the position already taken. He accidentally kills the son of the most powerful man in town (played by Robert Mitchum) and is forced to run for his life, with a bullet in the chest.
While trying to evade the bounty hunters and Pinkerton agents who are after him, he meets Nobody, a solitary and surprisingly erudite Native American who believes him to be the ghost of the poet William Blake.
Not to be confused with the [[DC Comics]] character of [[Deadman (Comic Book)|the same name]].
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{{tropelist}}
* [[The Alleged Steed]]: Mr. Dickinson's Pinto, which he wants back in addition to wanting his son's killer dead. The others, quite naturally, mock him behind his back for it.
* [[Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence]]: {{spoiler|This is what Nobody expects William Blake to do, whether he wants to or not}}.
* [[Arc Words]]: "Have you got any tobacco?"
* [[Authority Equals Asskicking]]: Mr. Dickinson, the boss of Machine. He seems to carry a shotgun around with him at all times, and even uses it to threaten the three baddest bounty hunters in the west into taking his assignment. This was Robert Mitchum's final role.
* [[Banned in China]]: The Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification banned the film initially, considering a brief (i.e. 4 seconds) scene where a woman is being held at gunpoint while fellating a man to be gratuitous sexual violence. The distributors then delivered a prompt "what the fuck, idiots?" to the review board, who passed it with the R18+ rating.
* [[Bilingual Bonus]]: Uses Cree and Blackfoot without subtitles. Cree has some choice insults.
* [[Blade of Grass Cut]]
* [[Bounty Hunter]]: Three of them, all insane to varying degrees and {{spoiler|killed off in inverse order to the height of their insanity}}.
* [[Catch Phrase]]: Nobody's is, "Stupid fucking white man!" He even [[Actor Allusion|gets to say it]] in Jarmusch's next film ''[[Ghost Dog]]''.
* [[City Slicker]]: The protagonist is a quintessential tenderfoot. At first.
* [[Deliberately Monochrome]]: Shot in beautiful black-and-white, like an Ansel Adams photo.
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* [[Downer Ending]]: Shouldn't come as a surprise given the film's title and the fact that the protagonist is mortally wounded by the end of the first act.
* [[Foreshadowing]]
{{quote|
* [[Everything Trying to Kill You]]
* [[Gorn]]: Deliberately subverted. Scenes of violence are staged as brief, awkward, and nausea-inducing; the camera lingers sadly over the outcome.
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* [[Meaningful Name]]: William Blake, Dickinson, Nobody, etc.
* [[Mind Screw]]: From the very first scene to the very last moment.
* [[Mutual Kill]]: {{spoiler|Nobody and Cole Wilson.}}
* [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast]]: The town of Machine is just as soulless of an industrial town as you'd imagine.
* [[Noble Savage]]: Nobody describes how he was raised and presented in white society as one of these.
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* [[Pinkerton Detective]]: Two of them, both of whom get killed.
* [[Popcultural Osmosis]]: Most of the "Indian sayings" Nobody uses are actually quotations from the poet William Blake.
* [[Pop Star Composer]]: [[Neil Young]] provides a soundtrack that's entirely improvised on electric guitar.
* [[Psycho for Hire]]: Cole Wilson, the cannibal bounty hunter. He's so bad that {{spoiler|he kills his two infamous colleagues just for annoying him, and eats the second}}.
* [[River of Insanity]]: The whole trip is a journey into the madness of the American soul. Blake must be put [[Long Bus Trip|on a boat]] to cleanse him and prepare him for the journey [[Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence|to the afterlife]] as the surroundings get weirder and darker and more dangerous the further he goes into the wilderness. And then to top it off, there's the opening railroad journey, piloted by Crispin Glover:
{{quote|
'''Blake:''' [describes his journey]
'''Trainman:''' Machine! ([[Scare Chord]]) That's the end of the line! }}
* [[Terrible Trio]] / [[Quirky Miniboss Squad]]: The three hunters.
* [[Those Two Bad Guys]]: The Pinkerton detectives.
* [[Took a Level
* [[Your Eyes Can Deceive You]]: Nobody steals William Blake's glasses: "Perhaps you will see better without them."
* [[The Western]]: Acid Western.
* [[Women in Refrigerators]]: {{spoiler|Thel, disposed of after a few minutes of screen time.}}
* [[What a Senseless Waste of Human Life]]
{{quote|
* [[World Half Empty]]: Westernized society is shown to be corrupt and cruel, epitomized by the awful industrial town of "Machine." Unusually, Native society isn't idealized in comparison.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Films of the 1990s]]
[[Category:Deadman]]▼
[[Category:Film]]
[[Category:Film Westerns]]
[[Category:Native American Media]]
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