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Probably no one will read this...oh well...but backing up the original poster here...
Just watched "Dead Man" for the second time and there are many reasons to see it as being a bardo (book of the dead) on film. Personally I think you can see Blake as being dead from the beginning and simultaneously not dead (yet), making his way through different levels of hell, pursued by hungry spirits. Notice how almost immediately Nobody asks him for tobacco? And the things Nobody tells him, asking who was the man who killed him (when Blake says "I'm not dead" I can almost hear Nobody thinking, "Stupid white man.") I'm pretty sure that many different cultures bury people with tokens they are to use to bribe the spirits to help them find the way. The people aren't quite real (the marshall whose head bursts way too easily; the three trappers who quarrel over Blake as if they're going to cut him up and devour him; the cannibalistic bounty hunter who doesn't even seem human -- because, just as Blake is both dead and still living, he is both a demon and a human simultaneously), the landscape is full of death even when they reach the lush coastline (the smouldering villages with skeletons, the dead faun -- you can see that Blake is figuring out what has really happened when he finds the faun). When Nobody tells Blake he must go down to the three trappers, he says, "It's a test." From what I know of them, admittedly not *that much, books of the dead lay out the different deities or spirits the soul will meet, warn of the challenges the soul is likely to face, etc. I see the train ride in the beginning as representing his life: it seems to last a long time then, when it's over, it went by in a flash. People get on, people get off; they keep changing just as relationships come and go.
Also, anyone notice that the only one to really interact with him on the train, Crispin Glover, tries to tell him too, in an oblique way? Not just about the dangers of the town; he also talks about lying in the boat on your back, looking up at the clouds, with the sound of the water in your head; and that is the exact image with which the movie ends. It's come full circle, and so has Blake. He's returning to the source of the spirits -- he's successfully navigated the journeylands and accepted the fact that he is really dead and must leave.
I think the movie is utterly brilliant. I intend to watch it again soon, and I think I may have to read some William Blake.
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