Jim Jarmusch’s films are all about textures and surfaces. It sometimes feels like he’s hinting at wellsprings of deeper meaning or emotion, but everything is held at a remove – cold, observing, often ironic. This probably contributes to the love-it-or-hate-it reactions his films seem to inspire, especially the early ones: are they studies in the carefully calibrated hipsterism of people who cloak their authentic selves in the trappings of cool, or particularly egregious examples of it? Both? Neither?
In either (or any) case, they certainly look good: shot in stark black and white, and obsessed with contours and physical details, the camera glides over the surroundings, or stays completely still as people come and go. It’s hard to find a better word for it than “cool.”
In his feature debut, 1984’s Stranger Than Paradise, the arrival of a foreign, female cousin broke the routines of two caddish, cynical American guys, and the three set out on a bickering, amusing road trip to Florida. It even obliquely addressed issues of constructed identity: the cool guy’s cousin irritates him, with her old-country ways that highlight how much he’s tried to leave them behind and her unironic embrace of American pop culture. (It also is easily a contender for another Song for a Sunday, as she dances around the kitchen to Jarmusch regular Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell On You.” “Fuck is that?” he asks. “I really hate that kind of music.”)
Down By Law, from 1986, features another triad: a pimp, an unemployed DJ, and an Italian tourist who wind up, for various reasons, in a jail cell together in New Orleans. It’s typical of the film that their escape from jail is left off camera: one minute they’re locked up, the next they’re on the run through the Louisiana bayou. Jarmusch doesn’t have the time or inclination to sketch out their big plan. The movie traffics in Hollywood tropes, but from odd angles.
According to Roger Ebert, Jarmusch said he’d never seen the bayou before arriving to shoot Down By Law. This also makes a lot of sense. The New Orleans and surrounding areas here are more related to cinema than geography – these are noir landscapes, Southern Gothic cemeteries, sweaty unventilated upstairs rooms in fleabag motels, waterways that seem more out of Night of the Hunter than anywhere specific in the world.
The film’s opening conveys a lot of this. Beginning with a sleek shot of a hearse, it’s a constantly shifting montage set to Tom Waits’ “Jockey Full of Bourbon,” the first single off Rain Dogs. It’s a travelogue of some sort of imaginary South, gleaned from film. Waits also stars – again, appropriately enough, for a very self-aware kind of movie – as the unemployed DJ who’s set up for a murder he didn’t commit.
The song combines a lot of things at once: spaghetti western flourishes, driving blues, jazz riffing, Waits’ whiskey growl. The lyrics are pastiche nonsense, but the repeated phrase lingers at the start of this movie, giving everything a feeling of rootless dread: “The house is on fire, the children are alone.”
I especially like how Jarmusch fades the song out for brief exchanges, before coming back full blast. John Lurie rises from his bed, asks (presumably) one of the sex workers what she’s doing outside on the porch – she replies, “Just watching the light change.” He lies back down, and the girl in his bed opens her eyes and stares at the ceiling. Waits enters some other room in town, clearly drunk at dawn; graffiti on the wall has a gallows’ humor thing going – the most visible reads, “It’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop.” He too lies down next to a girl, who might’ve just been pretending to sleep; her eyes open and she too stares at the ceiling.
Jarmusch manages to convey a lot of information quickly about these characters, where they are, and how they relate to each other, while leaving much of it mysterious. And all the while, the song keeps pulsing, with Waits warning, “The house is on fire, and the children are alone.” The shots are beautiful and alluring, but there’s clearly some bad shit afoot.
June 6, 2015
Hotel Filmfest
Posted by ludditerobot under Commentary, Film, Reviews | Tags: Draft Day, Endless Love, Enemy of the State, Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift, Girl, Interrupted, That Awkward Moment, The Good Lie, The Heat |Leave a Comment
As a proper luddite and card-carrying hipster goofball, I don’t have access to HBO at my house, or any other television station for that matter. But as a proper robot — or, at the very least, someone who wants to be plugged in, even if I pretend that’s not the case — I ravenously gobble up whatever is on in situations where I happen to find a television that does have such access. Having spent the past week in a hotel room, I found myself watching a bunch of things. Here they are.
Draft Day: Enjoyable enough as schlock, though the ticking timeline and heightened tension never really explains why anyone would be excited to join the Cleveland Browns. Costner is in his element, though I was distracted the entire time by how weird his ears are, something I’d never noticed.
Enemy of the State: I haven’t seen this in years, and it held up pretty well. The 1998 NSA fears are kind of prescient, even in an over-the-top format, and it’s a reminder of when Will Smith was a superstar (and why). Casting grizzled Gene Hackman as a former spy gone rogue is a nice touch, evokingThe Conversation in reverse even if that was unintentional. Tony Scott’s action sequences are fun for the most part. And fun fact: one scene was filmed in an apartment adjacent to where I once lived; Smith jumps out my old window and lands miles away, which I will always enjoy.
The Good Lie: Woo boy. Reese Witherspoon is a jaded case worker finding jobs for immigrants, in this case Sudanese refugees. She learns a thing or two about Sudan … and herself. At one point, the three Sudanese men tell a why did the chicken cross the road joke and laugh hysterically, because apparently there were no jokes in Sudan. This is not a good film.
The Heat: I laughed twice. Apparently, Paul Feig thought it was funny when Melissa McCarthy yells obscenities and that people inscrutably think Sandra Bullock is a trans woman. This is also not a good film.
Endless Love: The funniest comedy of last year. From my understanding, it completely inverts much of the storyline of the original text, but that’s a small price to pay for the nonstop laffs. On the other hand, the movie looks respectable at every turn visually, which is what you’d expect from Andrew Dunn, the cinematographer who brought you The Butler, Precious, and, um, Hot Rod, for some reason.
Girl, Interrupted: There are moments when this movie seems authentic, but they are few and far between. Angelina Jolie is so contemptible for so much of it that there’s little to enjoy, and Winona Ryder’s final voiceover narration kills any good will it might’ve built up. I’d never actually seen this before. I did not like it.
That Awkward Moment: What a confused movie this is. There’s actually a pretty fun cameraderie between Michael B. Jordan, Miles Teller, and the impressively vacant Zac Ephron, but the things they say are remarkably stupid. I won’t lie, though — it has its moments. Also, Imogen Poots — my nominee for best name in show business — is extremely pretty. This is neither here nor there and not actually relevant to the film, but there you go. Also, boner jokes are funny but they’re not really that funny; on the other hand, Miles Teller getting hit by a car is a lot funnier here than in Whiplash. The latter movie convinced me he’s actually a pretty good actor, but he still has one of the most punchable faces I’ve ever seen, so I enjoyed that thoroughly.
Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift: I confess that this is the first FaF movie I’ve seen. I enjoyed it a lot actually, at least in part because I was extremely drunk.