Late in Coming Blog Post
My own road journey is quite a lengthy story. One I won't get into here. However, I find that this first semester back in school is throwing my head for a spin. Needless to say, I do have a favorite road movie, even after missing our Monday at noon deadline. I would say that my favorite of the lot is Dead Man written/directed by Jim Jarmusch. It's the story of William Blake, an accountant from Cleveland, who leaves his parents' deaths and a rejection by his fiance behind. Somewhere around 1850, William Blake boards a train west to work for a mining company. Upon arrival, he is denied the job (it was given to someone else) and gets in bed with the company owner's son's fiance. This upset is settled, of course, at gunpoint. Blake escapes the scene, leaving the bodies of the son and fiance, but carrying a bullet next to his heart. The true "roadiness" of the film begins when Blake is befriended by an exiled Native American (self-dubbed as "Nobody"). Nobody is convinced that Blake is actually William Blake, the deceased English poet. This bond brings them through both comical and treacherously violent situations. As Blake is slowly transformed into a killer and an outlaw, struggling to survive in the chaotic world of the wild west, his eyes begin to open to the transience of life as his own life slowly comes to an end.