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Review

Director Jarmusch uses the elements of the traditional western to craft a grim and gritty tale of one man's odyssey through a harrowing, alien environment to his inevitable resolution. Depp is the perfect embodiment of a wanderer adrift in a world he never made, searching for meaning and direction in a hostile landscape fraught with danger, studded with pitfalls, and muddled by one miscommunication after another. Dead Man is part existential allegory, part fairy tale; and in it Depp is basically the knight errant who must overcome a series of trials on his path. But there's no Holy Grail, no Golden Fleece at the end of the journey; the reward is just getting through it. In its starkness and simplicity, Dead Man returns to the crystalline laconicism of Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise; and though we may sense that this saga is essentially without hope, we are still wryly bemused and frequently amused. Highly original score composed and performed by Neil Young.