Dead Man Essay

The film Dead Man, realized by Jim Jarmusch, uses a variety of film conventions and character development to explore several important philosophical questions. The question of reality is explored using key aspects of pragmatism to guide the viewer through a series of conflicting events. The nature of the mind is considered as well, using arguments of logical positivists to truly scrutinize the ideas brought up in the film. The movie tests the viewer’s beliefs about the soul, even tying ideas into eastern metaphysics and the concept of inner reality versus outer reality. In fact, Jarmusch even uses this film to bring attention to the nature of being, including a wide range of existentialist ideas. The film is gorgeous both cinematically speaking,
Whether it is a problem of language that brings William to ignore the warnings and information brought to him by other characters or something else is not certain. Nonetheless, he states himself that while Nobody has been speaking to him all this time, he has not been able to understand a single word, even though Nobody was, for the most part, speaking the same language. The concept of language being fundamentally inconsistent is considered as well, and it must be considered that William is unable to find meaning in the words of Nobody because they are not words he wants to hear. Omens and thoughts of death and deeper ideas do not coincide with his simpler goal of escaping the wanted posters with his face. He does not want to consider what these words might mean for his
His essence, or soul, is brought up several times in the film. Nobody makes it clear that their journey is in order to return his soul “to the bridge made of waters, to the mirror. There [he] will be taken to the next level where [his] spirit belongs (…) to the place where the sea meets the sky." This brings up the question of whether essence precedes existence, or whether existence precedes essence. This quote suggests that Nobody believes that souls come from and return to one place, and that while perhaps souls were not always in existence, they have at least been in existence before or between lives, and continue on into the