Symbolism and Metaphors…Help?
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Dead Man
vbcutie1012 — 18 years ago(February 11, 2008 12:47 AM)
Okay so i definitely got the gist of this moviethat he was dead from the beginning and the whole movie is his journey to the afterlifebut does anyone know or at least have an interpretation of some of the various metaphors and symbolism throughout?
examples: tobacco, the creepy native american people in the woods that blake dreamed were there or something, the officer's head in the firewood after he's killed, some of the meaningful lines throughout, and anything else you can think of
i REALLY liked this movie, so i just want to know some people's thoughts on the specifics, you know? -
rekvelt — 18 years ago(February 25, 2008 09:29 AM)
The indian is the guiding force of his uncounsiousness
The city and the works the exponents of unconsiousness in general
( sex, death, violence , power etc,) It's someone going to the deapth of teh force(s) of his soul. ( religion /instinct/ love )
work from there, you'llfind out yourself , its a nice personal adventure inevitably. Ok one more thing:
The good indian and the bad bounty hunter shoot each other at the end
thus dualism of main characters mind ceaseshe is free.. going into the spiritual unknown.
Try 'Barton Fink' ( coen brothers) , 'Fight Club', and 'Apocalyps Now' also!.
I like these kind of initiation movies but dead man seems to beat them all as far as i'm concerned. It must be also similar to Dante's inferno a classical work, but that should be very hard to read. Movies are more accesible and teh knowledge about these things is becoming more and more common knowledge.
By the way, tabaco is like the ultimate attachment of the soul to the fysical realm I guess.
But don't let the explaining spoil it, it's all about the feel and the sense of direction the movie could provide you.
cheers willem -
theconservativeliberal — 17 years ago(April 20, 2008 04:44 AM)
inferno hard to read? you must be a 6th grader. dante is popular because he's dead easy to read and interpret. the link from dead man to the divine comedy is so easy to get. william blake illustrated a lot of the comedy,
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alessiomedda — 17 years ago(May 19, 2008 09:00 PM)
Maybe you haven't read The Divine Comedy in the original language. The Italian that Dante uses may have been easy when Dante wrote the opera, but now requires interpretation and a good amount of study. In Italy it is first studied in high school, and it takes three years for the students to go trough Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. If then the student decides to engage in classic studies, there usually is a 6 month in depth university course for each part of the opera. In the Divina Commedia nothing is what is looks like, and without the proper historic background it is impossible to grasp.
I have seen many English version and the translations are so much easier. -
cataliar — 14 years ago(December 10, 2011 07:18 PM)
3 years later
I liked the Ciardi translation, although some criticize it. He uses translations that help preserve the rhyming scheme in English and some feel that causes the translations to not be as accurate as possible. However, he also offers helpful footnotes throughout. -
skeleton_monkeys — 17 years ago(February 03, 2009 03:10 AM)
kudos for the detailed response, but i have to say i find it funny you could produce that and then misspell the word physical. then again i did have to google the word misspell to check the correct spelling
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jswiggum — 18 years ago(April 03, 2008 06:43 AM)
Tobacco is concidered sacred to most indian tribes. It is often burned as an offering to the spirits. When Nobody is constantly asking him if he has tobacco, he is wondering if he has his sacrifice for the spirits, if he is ready for his trip.
In the end Nobody tells him that the tobacco is for William Blakes trip, but William responds "but I don't smoke" somewhat signifying that the "stupid white man" still doesn't get it.
-j- -
julitrotter — 17 years ago(May 30, 2008 08:23 PM)
I am cherokee indian and agree with most every comment you have received thus far. I am slso a Production Designer and need to get in touch with Robert Ziembicki to give him props on his ART! He is brilliant, so is the Director and Director of Photograpy! PROPS to all of those plus sound and sound designer!!!
Spiritualism comes in many forms and from the comments I have just read, everyone as a whole has hit the nail on the haed! Indian spirits, animals such as bears, deers, eagles, crows, etc. all have special powers in the spiritual realm and beliefs of the indians for centuries. Each have a different power and can lead you (depending on who you are at birth to believe your animal spirit guide will be) into the afterlife.
On a lighter note, I think Johnny Depp is hot and believe he also has some Cherokee Indian blood in him!
Oh, and check out the indie "Cigarettes" (I think was the title, with Iggy Pop, etc) I kinda sucked for me, but had some great symbolism, I hopelol -
scot-herrigel — 17 years ago(June 15, 2008 01:09 PM)
I would say that the movie is somewhat of a parallel to Dante's Divine Comedy, but with premises based more along the lines of William Blake's poetry and philosophy. To begin with, the fact that Blake is taken to an industrial town, run by a man named Dickens, and called "Machine". This is a reference to Blake's abhorrence of reason and system, which is symbolized most eloquently by the word machine, as well as possibly Dickens, in that his line of thought, as far as I know, was highly unimaginative; his books being centered mainly around industrial themes. The Indian, on the other hand, represents the savage, primal, uninhibited and liberal energies that Blake equated with imagination. All the bounty hunters and other like characters represent agents of the Machine, or reason, or, more broadly, generalization. This fact is verified in the scene right before Blake and the Indian cross the river, wherein Blake shoots the preacher after the Indian quotes an extremely poignant Blake line about the true nature of Christ and the Devil. Because Blake killed off the manifestations of the machine energy he was warranted a passage across the river and into the realm of the uninhibited primal energies, which in Blake's philosophy are highly synonymous with Paradise, (although, in the context of being considered a parallel to the Divine Comedy, this could also possibly be Purgatory).
I guess the killing of the Indian by the final white bounty hunter in the end - and vice versa- is indicative of the fact that some sort of a unity has been attained, wherein the contrary elements of reason and imagination cancel each other out, (Blake would refer to this as a return to the state of Albion, or the wholeness of an un-fallen man).
The fact that in the final scene Blake is carried out into a sea does not really add up with Blakean symbolism, though, because the sea, to Blake,symbolized the epitome of chaos - which is not really what this scene refers to. As such, I guess it will have to be concluded that the movie can be simultaneously interpreted under different contexts, and that this final scene could then possibly be the casting off from the solid ground of the self and entering into the mysterious realm of "the home of the spirits," (I would say that this correlates to Native American spirituality, which also reconciles the need for the tobacco with the story line in general).