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Dead Man, 1995
Accountant William Blake (Johnny Depp) travels across the country for a new job, only to find that he's too late to claim it. Things only go from bad to worse when he ends up in the middle of a deadly confrontation between two lovers, a confrontation in which he is mortally wounded. Carrying a soon-to-be-fatal bullet in his chest, Blake wanders into the wilderness where he is cared for by an indigenous man called Nobody (Gary Farmer) and pursued by a slew of bounty hunters.
I have spent literal decades thinking that I'd find this film too pretentious or too slow, and I am very pleased to say that I was wrong on both counts.
I have been struggling to articulate what I found so great about this movie, and what I can settle on right now is the way that both the main character and the film itself seem to pick up momentum as things go on. Blake starts out as a timid, nebbish character, but as the weight of his impending death presses against him, he transforms into something more akin to a force of nature.
I have enjoyed performances from Johnny Depp before (in particular his manic turn in Ed Wood), but, wow, to me this film seemed to fit him like a glove. And the longer the movie went on, the more compelling and magnetic I found his performance. Sometimes I think there's a strong synthesis between writing and an actor, and that's really how it felt to me here. The line delivery just seemed to perfectly fit the dialogue and the overall vibe of the film. (The scene above---"You know my poetry"--is a great example of this).
Depp (along with Farmer) is a solid anchor for the film, but the cast is chock-full of an almost absurd list of actors. Alfred Molina, Gabriel Byrne, Billy Bob Thornton, Lance Henrickson, Michael Wincott, John Hurt, Jared Harris, ROBERT MITCHUM. I often find myself kind of annoyed and distracted by excessive numbers of recognizable faces, but this film is so weird anyway that sure, why not have Iggy Pop show up as a cross-dressing cowboy named Sally?
There really is something thrilling about a film way exceeding your expectations. This film really charmed me, and I found it to be the rare delight where the final act is actually the strongest. Very glad I finally gave it a chance.
Dead Man, 1995
Accountant William Blake (Johnny Depp) travels across the country for a new job, only to find that he's too late to claim it. Things only go from bad to worse when he ends up in the middle of a deadly confrontation between two lovers, a confrontation in which he is mortally wounded. Carrying a soon-to-be-fatal bullet in his chest, Blake wanders into the wilderness where he is cared for by an indigenous man called Nobody (Gary Farmer) and pursued by a slew of bounty hunters.
I have spent literal decades thinking that I'd find this film too pretentious or too slow, and I am very pleased to say that I was wrong on both counts.
I have been struggling to articulate what I found so great about this movie, and what I can settle on right now is the way that both the main character and the film itself seem to pick up momentum as things go on. Blake starts out as a timid, nebbish character, but as the weight of his impending death presses against him, he transforms into something more akin to a force of nature.
I have enjoyed performances from Johnny Depp before (in particular his manic turn in Ed Wood), but, wow, to me this film seemed to fit him like a glove. And the longer the movie went on, the more compelling and magnetic I found his performance. Sometimes I think there's a strong synthesis between writing and an actor, and that's really how it felt to me here. The line delivery just seemed to perfectly fit the dialogue and the overall vibe of the film. (The scene above---"You know my poetry"--is a great example of this).
Depp (along with Farmer) is a solid anchor for the film, but the cast is chock-full of an almost absurd list of actors. Alfred Molina, Gabriel Byrne, Billy Bob Thornton, Lance Henrickson, Michael Wincott, John Hurt, Jared Harris, ROBERT MITCHUM. I often find myself kind of annoyed and distracted by excessive numbers of recognizable faces, but this film is so weird anyway that sure, why not have Iggy Pop show up as a cross-dressing cowboy named Sally?
There really is something thrilling about a film way exceeding your expectations. This film really charmed me, and I found it to be the rare delight where the final act is actually the strongest. Very glad I finally gave it a chance.