Jim Jarmusch's visionary, allegorical western chronicles a man's search for a physical and spiritual presence in the world. Johnny Depp is William Blake, traveling from Cleveland, where his parents have just died, to the Western town of Machine, where he has been promised a job as an accountant. Things don't bode well for Blake when, while playing solitaire in the train car, a grimy-faced fireman (Crispin Glover) ominously warns him that when he reaches the town of Machine, he will find his own grave. It turns out the fireman is almost as good as his word. When Blake arrives at Machine, a backwater cesspool of a town, he reports to the Dickinson Metalworks, only to be told by the office manager, John Scholfield (John Hurt) that the accounting position has been filled. Confronting the owner John Dickinson (Robert Mitchum) to protest, Blake is ordered to leave at gunpoint -- otherwise he'll be "pushing up daisies." With no money to his name and no place to go, Blake ends up in a bar, where he meets the beautiful Thell Russell (Mili Avital). They go back to her room to make love but are interrupted in their lovemaking by Charlie Dickinson (Gabriel Byrne) -- Dickinson's son and Thell's boyfriend. Charlie shoots at Blake but misses, killing Thell instead. Blake grabs a gun and shoots Charlie dead. Critically wounded from a chest wound, he leaps out of the window and becomes a man on the run. The next morning he discovers an Indian guide named Nobody (Gary Farmer) tending to his chest wound. Nobody mistakes Blake for the English poet William Blake and determines that he will be Blake's guide back into the spirit world. As the two undertake this spiritual odyssey, they head westward for the Pacific Ocean, leaving a trail of carnage behind them.