of his previous work, but this singular film is certainly his most profound and penetrating portrait to date. Dead Man is at one turn a transcendent, allegorical poem concerning the cruel journey we all take toward death while also being a postmodern tome, full of dry irony, unsettling juxtapositions between character and place, and an essentialist myth without the trappings of metanarrative. Dead Man's Western frontier is a wasteland where the center cannot hold. However, as odd, idiosyncratic, and acerbic this motion picture is at times, Dead Man is able to penetrate a deep level of understanding that speaks to the human heart.
With the recent death of his parents, Cleveland accountant William Blake, played by Johnny Depp, chooses a new life with opportunity he finds in the Old West. However, as soon as Depp's William Blake enters into a desolate frontier town, he submits to the death of his old self. William Blake is manipulated, cheated, and abused by a web of fated circumstance, at every turn caught in double binds, deceit, and corruption where no solutions work to his advantage.
From the limited perspective of the ego, the liar's paradox and betrayal that Blake finds himself enmeshed within is unjust, cruel, and immoral. However from the broader perspective of spiritual allegory and mysticism, William Blake's deeper self is his experience. He is not just his skin-encapsulated ego. He is both the naïve and unassuming Midwesterner undergoing a transformation of personality and the cast of characters—from the knowledgeable Native American guide, "Nobody," to the band of journeymen bounty hunters—assisting the metamorphosis. This transformation is cruel from the limited egoic perspective, but, from the perspective of Depp's deeper self, it is merely a falling away, a stripping down, and metabolizing of that which no longer serves a purpose.
It is this transformational journey to authentic selfhood and the final death-rebirth that is a brilliant portrait of the power of Pluto at work. The entire film is a slow journey through purgatory where the definitions between death and life remain ambiguous and where it is hard to discern just when and where Depp's Blake "dies" and where he is "reborn." Death is not presented as a fixed point in time in the narrative but as a process of simultaneous decay and renewal. The film's director, Jim Jarmusch states, "William Blake said himself when he was near death that death was really just getting up and going into another room. So the film as death goes is an extension of life or a part of life--that's the basic idea behind death in the film."(3)
Viewed from the lens of a transformative and powerful Pluto transit, Dead Man might be unparalleled in its ability to evoke the "Pluto" experience of the soul's deepening into the processes of life through death to a previous identity. Every character and subtle detail of this film acts like a hospice worker assisting William Blake to his final return to the world of Spirit. Neil Young's raw and piercing guitar motif, Christian Glover's inimitably bizarre psychopomp, Gary Farmer's trickster, "Nobody," the amoral ragtag pack of paid-for-hire killers, and, most importantly, the haunting setting of a nameless forest transitioning from fall to winter all guide—sometimes nurturingly, sometimes mercilessly—Depp's Blake through a purgatory of rebirth.
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