Blu-ray, DVD Release: Dead Man

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: April 17, 2018
Price: DVD $20.52, Blu-ray $27.37
Studio: Criterion

With the 1995 Western drama Dead Man, his first period piece, Jim Jarmusch (Gimme Danger) imagined the nineteenth-century American West as an existential wasteland, delivering a surreal reckoning with the ravages of industrialization, the country’s legacy of violence and prejudice, and the natural cycle of life and death.

Accountant William Blake (Johnny Depp, Mortdecai) has hardly arrived in the godforsaken outpost of Machine before he’s caught in the middle of a fatal lovers’ quarrel. Wounded and on the lam, Blake falls under the watch of the outcast Nobody (Gary Farmer), a Native American without a tribe, who guides his companion on a spiritual journey, teaching him to dispense poetic justice along the way.

Featuring austerely beautiful black-and-white photography by Robby Müller (The American Friend) and a live-wire score by Neil Young, Dead Man is a profound and unique revision of the western genre.

Criterion’s director-approved editions of the movie contain the following:

* New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Jim Jarmusch, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
* New Q&A in which Jarmusch responds to questions sent in by fans
* New readings of William Blake poems by members of the cast, including Mili Avital, Alfred Molina, and Iggy Pop
* New selected-scene audio commentary by production designer Robert Ziembicki and sound mixer Drew Kunin
* New interview with actor Gary Farmer
* Deleted scenes
* Jarmusch’s location scouting photos
* More!
* Essays by critic Amy Taubin and music journalist Ben Ratliff