The tale of “stupid fucking whiteman”.
Opening with a foreboding train trip where the machine takes William Blake (Johnny Depp) to Machine, across an increasingly desolate landscape. By turn, the passengers become increasingly wild looking, to match the landscape cumulating in the mad looking Chrispin Glover, giving a veiled warning of Blakes fate.
The film is poetic in it’s dialogue and dreamlike with the black and white photography by Robbie Mullier. The characters are a cross between sublimely beautiful for Blake and Nobody the Indian to pitch black humour for the mercenaries that track them. Accompanying it all like an electronic heartbeat with angina is Neil Young’s guitar soundtrack.
Like many of Jarmusch’s films, there is a languid pace that infrequently explodes into action, in this case harsh violence. There is a strong theme of the inability of man to survive within the natural environment, making us all dead men, and most of us “stupid fucking whiteman”.
The bonus features are limited, but of high quality. Over 14 minutes of deleted scenes including an alternative death scene for some of the characters.
This is a film to be experienced, and with patience, or you may miss the charm of it.