William Blake (Johnny Depp) may bear the name of the famous American poet, but he is also a doppelganger of K., the (almost) nameless protagonist of Kafka's “The Castle.” Like him, he arrives in a foreign land to take up a position—not as a surveyor, but as an accountant in the run-down town of “Machine”—the last stop at the end of the railway line and the surveyed world. But the job has already been filled, and after a rendezvous with a prostitute and a bloody confrontation with her jealous lover, Blake finds himself seriously wounded and on the run. Together with the well-read Native American Nobody, Blake embarks on a psychedelic journey that takes him not only to the edge of the afterlife, but also deep into the American myth.

Print from the collection of Kino im Blauen Salon (HfG KA)