Movie Review: The Dead Don't Die

The Dead Don't Die **** / *****

Directed by: Jim Jarmusch.

Written by: Jim Jarmusch.

Starring: Bill Murray (Chief Cliff Robertson), Adam Driver (Officer Ronnie Peterson), Tom Waits (Hermit Bob), Chloë Sevigny (Officer Mindy Morrison), Steve Buscemi (Farmer Frank Miller), Eszter Balint (Fern), Danny Glover (Hank Thompson), Maya Delmont (Stella), Taliyah Whitaker (Olivia), Jahi Di'Allo Winston (Geronimo), Caleb Landry Jones (Bobby Wiggins), RZA (Dean), Larry Fessenden (Danny Perkins), Rosie Perez (Posie Juarez), Carol Kane (Mallory O'Brien), Rosal Colon (Lily), Tilda Swinton (Zelda Winston), Sara Driver (Female Coffee Zombie), Iggy Pop (Male Coffee Zombie), Selena Gomez (Zoe), Austin Butler (Jack), Luka Sabbat (Zack).

 

George A. Romero apparently had it in mind to make 10 films in his living dead series about zombies – but he only made it to six in his lifetime. But when you watch those six films, you can tell that they change with the times – the underlying themes of each being something that was going on at the time they film were made – from racism to consumerism to military industrial complex, etc. It’s therefore somewhat fitting then that another filmmaker would come along to keep Romero’s spirit alive in the zombie movie realm. And when that filmmaker is Jim Jarmusch, you know you won’t get precisely a Romero clone – but then again, you don’t want one. That’s not what Jarmusch does. What he’s done in The Dead Don’t Die is craft a hilarious, deadpan zombie comedy – that is hugely entertaining and funny, right up until it isn’t anymore. As Adam Driver’s Ronnie keeps telling everyone – “This isn’t going to end well”.

 

The film takes place in small-town Pennsylvania – where the Chief of Police is Cliff (Bill Murray) and his Deputy is Ronnie (Adam Driver) – and their main job is to occasionally go out into the woods and check on Hermit Bob (Tom Waits) to see if he stole some chickens. And even if Hermit Bob shoots at them, they won’t arrest him – he doesn’t mean anything by it after all, and he aims well over their heads. Everything in town seems to revolve around the local diner and hardware store, gas station, and motel. The residents all know each other – and can deal with each other. Even Hank (Danny Glover) gets along with Frank Miller (Steve Buscemi) – even though he wears a read “Make America White Again” baseball hat.

 

But something isn’t right here. The news reports keep talking about Polar Fracking – which according to the science community, has screwed up the rotation of the earth. But don’t worry, the government assures us – that’s not true. And besides, polar fracking has provided plenty of jobs for people. Sure, it’s still broad daylight at 9 pm, but there’s nothing wrong with that. And then, of course, the zombies start showing up – and they never stop.

 

Jarmusch, of course, is one of the key indie filmmakers of the 1980s and 1990s – made even more so by the fact that he never really went to Hollywood – he just kept on making his films his way, and had now for more than 30 years. Personally, I think he’s been doing arguably the best work of his career lately – Only Lovers Left Alive and Paterson are among the very best films of his career. The Dead Don’t Die is up to that level – but it’s still unmistakably a Jarmusch film. If you’re on his humor wavelength, then The Dead Don’t Die is a deadpan comedy classic – with Murray and Driver seemingly trying to see who can out deadpan the other best. You can add Tilda Swinton as a samurai sword wielding Scottish undertaker to her list of genuinely strange, genuinely great off-kilter performances. The supporting cast is filled with stars who are perfectly cast in their roles – from Buscemi and Glover, to Selena Gomez to Larry Fessenden to RZA to Chloe Sevigny to Caleb Landry Jones to Carol Kane and Iggy Pop. Jarmusch casts his films as well as any director in the world – he knows precisely what each role needs.

 

Jarmusch is poking us in the ribs with his jokes here – he’s mocking the genre that he clearly loves, as well as us in the audience. His jokes get meta – as when Adam Driver helpfully informs Bill Murray that the song on the radio sounds familiar because it’s the theme song (we in the audience has heard it before – Murray hasn’t) – or when Driver reveals exactly how he knows that things are going to end badly.

 

In a way, then, Jarmusch is comforting us with the film – putting in through the expected motions, with his own twist on it of course. And you think that the film is perhaps too simple for Jarmusch – which of course, it is. But as the film keeps going and keeps going, we expect other things to happen as well – and they don’t. And Driver, of course, has been right all along, and we only get it when it’s too late. And that, of course, is the point of the whole movie. The final line says it all. And whose fault is that?

Movie Review: Paterson

Paterson

Directed by: Jim Jarmusch.

Written by: Jim Jarmusch. 

Starring: Adam Driver (Paterson), Golshifteh Farahani (Laura), Nellie (Marvin), Rizwan Manji (Donny), Barry Shabaka Henley (Doc), Chasten Harmon (Marie), William Jackson Harper (Everett), Method Man (Method Man), Kara Hayward (Female Student), Jared Gilman (Male Student), Sterling Jerins (Young Poet), Johnnie Mae (Doc's Wife), Masatoshi Nagase (Japanese Poet). 

 

It’s not a coincidence that Jim Jarmusch followed-up his brilliant Only Lovers Left Alive with Paterson. Both films take place in once thriving industrial cities, no fallen on hard times – even if Jarmusch doesn’t really depict them onscreen as that bad. In Only Lovers Left Alive, Detroit becomes a dark, desolate place to be sure – but also a romantic one – the backdrop for a pair of ageless vampires to indulge themselves. Paterson is ostensibly more realistic – no vampires this time, the main character is a bus driver – but he’s still living in his own world – a regimented world, in which he thrives on routine. You could argue he’s in a rut – but he’s seems fairly content to be there.

 

The main character in Paterson is Paterson – and he’s played in one of the great performances of the year by Adam Driver. The film depicts a week in his life, where every day he gets up at the same time – he doesn’t even need an alarm clock, eats the same breakfast, walks the same route to work, where he drives the same bus route. At the end of the day, he walks home the same way, talks to his wife Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), who has made them dinner, and then takes their dog – Marvin – on a walk. He will tie the dog up outside a bar, where he’ll go inside and talk to Doc (Barry Shabaka Henley) about, whatever, while he drinks one beer, then he’ll walk home again – ready to do the same thing all over again. On his lunch break – or a few spare minutes here and there – he writes poetry in a small notebook. The poems depict the mundane beauty of everyday life – one inspired by matchsticks for example – that, kind of like Paterson itself, seems to be about nothing when you first hear it, but is about a lot more than that when you think about it (even if it’s hard to put into words).

 

In other hands, this movie may be about the sad, pathetic life of Paterson – and his need to break free of it and see the world (in fact, in other movies, the entirety of this film would take place in 15 minutes, before the hero went on a journey). But Paterson has already been on his journey – we see, twice, his military portrait (Driver was in the Marines himself), and perhaps he simply needs his routine because of the military. Then again, when violence is actually threatened to break out – and Driver reacts – he seems different when the threat is neutralized – somewhat disturbed. Whatever he saw in his time in the military, he doesn’t say – it’s never once mentioned – but I think it informs the rest of the movie.

 

Jarmusch has made films before about fairly quiet central characters meeting a series of eccentric characters along the way – and for a while, Paterson appears like that. Paterson likes eavesdropping on the bus – two construction workers talking about their amorous conquests (or would have been conquests, if they weren’t so tired) – or two high school kids (a delightful callback to a Wes Anderson film) discussing anarchy. Paterson’s wife, Laura, is certainly eccentric herself – bouncing from one project to the next – which Paterson indulges and encourages – and never ceasing to experiment in the kitchen. There’s Doc and his chess tournaments and martial problems, the young couple (Chasten Harmon and William Jackson Harper) going through a breakup or Method Man rapping at a laundromat, Paterson’s constantly complaining boss or the Japanese poet from the final scene. Many of these characters say a lot more in their meetings than Paterson does – yet I think the film stays focused on Paterson throughout. He isn’t a blank slate really – but he is a man who lives inside his own head. He finds comfort there – and in his routine.

 

That is ultimately what I think Paterson is about – a man who finds solace in his own head – and in his own art, which he does for himself, and himself alone. He’s made no attempt to publish his poems – he doesn’t even have any copies of them. We know, early, that something will eventually happen – and when it does, Paterson doesn’t react in anger (the closet he gets is calmly telling his dog that he doesn’t like him). He needs his sense of calm – that he discovers in his poetry – and the poetry of others – and if it doesn’t go any further, so be it. Art being done for its own reward – whether or not you choose to share it – still has value.

Movie Review: Gimme Danger

Gimme Danger

Directed by: Jim Jarmusch.

Written by: Jim Jarmusch.

 

One of the problems with music documentaries is that they are almost always made by fans of the artists in question. Why else, of course, would one set out to make a documentary about a famous band or musician if they weren’t already a fan? What happens with these docs then is that they often become love letters to the band – must-sees for fans of the musicians in questions, but of limited interest to people who aren’t already on board. To a certain extent, I’m sure this is by design – after all, if you hate Iggy and the Stooges, why the hell would you want to watch Jim Jarmusch’s Gimme Danger, which charts the brief, tumultuous career of the legendary punk band in the first place. The best music docs of all time – the Maysles Gimme Shelter about the Stones and Altamont, Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back and Scorsese’s No Direction Home, both about Bob Dylan among them – become larger cultural documents that most of the fan oriented docs. Unfortunately, Jarmusch’s Gimme Danger falls more into this category – he himself has described the film as a love letter to the Stooges after all. Fortunately though, Gimme Danger does have a fascinating subject, than makes the 90 minute documentary fly by, and give you a sense of the people who made up a band that wasn’t all that successful when they were together, but has become legendary in the decades since. It’s not a great music doc – but it’s a good one.

 

Jarmusch makes the decision early on that he’s basically going to stick to the band members – and those immediately around them – in telling their own story. Unlike many music docs, he isn’t going to be interviewing rock journalists who will explain the historical significance of the Stooges and their music, and he isn’t going to be interviewing other musicians about their last legacy. All he wants is Iggy Pop and the other members of the band to explain how they got together, what happened as they toured, and how it all fell apart just a few years, and a few albums, later. This decision results in a more intimate look at the band itself than many docs get – but also a more limited scope. Iggy Pop is a great interview subject – whip smart, funny, quick witted and not one to who feels the need to burnish his own legend – because it doesn’t need burnishing. Unfortunately, the rest of the band aren’t as interesting as Iggy is – and perhaps that’s one reason why they broke up. This is an odd doc, in that it charts a band that wasn’t around for very long, but doesn’t really explained how the broke up – all of a sudden, they all just retreated to their parents homes, going their separate ways for years. Was there ever any fights, any tension – any resentment that Iggy got all the attention, but also was a reason why they missed or screwed up so many gigs, because of how much of a drug addict he was at the time? Jarmusch is perhaps too in awe of the Stooges – who he calls the great rock band in history (an assertion, I think most would disagree with – even if you love the Stooges) and his love of the band shows.

 

Having said all of that, there is still ample reason to see the film. The fan does have a lot of great footage of the band performing, which shows just what it was that made Iggy Pop such an electric stage presence – prancing around the stage, shirtless, with a dog collar, he made everyone around him better – they fed off that energy (he says he had to dance around even when recording – because the band played better when he did). He was all raging id, and that fed into the music and the energy around it.

 

A common complaint I have about music docs is true of Gimme Danger as well – and that is, I would have liked the film to have more, unbroken moments when we can hear the music itself – not just in a snippet or two, but perhaps a whole song. It’s interesting to hear how Iggy Pop’s lyrics were inspired by Soupy Sales – who wanted kids to write him letters, but in only 25 words or less – which Iggy adopted as a songwriting rule – but perhaps that could be explored a little bit more in depth than having the lyrics of No Fun flash on screen (No fun, my girl, no fun). What really fed into those lyrics – or the lyrics of I Wanna Be Your Dog.

 

Ultimately I enjoyed Gimme Danger – it does give you a glimpse into a rock band that honestly, I did not know nearly enough about – and Iggy Pop is such an intriguing person, both in the interviews, and the old footage, that the film is worth seeing just for that. And yet, I think there is a better, deeper, less reverent film to be made about the Stooges as well. Sometimes your biggest fan isn’t the person you want making a movie about you.

The FIlms of Jim Jarmusch: Conclusion and Ranking

2014 marks the 30^th Anniversary or Stranger Than Paradise, which was the film that brought Jarmusch to the attention of the film world. During that time, American Indies have evolved multiple times. When he started, he was one of the only people trying to make films the way he did – alongside the likes of John Sayles and the Coen Brothers. Indies went through a renaissance during the 1980s and early to mid-1990s, and then started a slow descent to where they are now – which is perhaps even harder to make then when Jarmusch started. But through it all, Jarmusch has continued to make films like only he can. His vision hasn’t changed – he’s still sympathetic to outsiders – “strangers in a strange land” if you will. And he has continued to find the financing for his films that allow him not to compromise. He has made 11 features and one documentary in that time. They aren’t all good – I don’t think I’ll be revisiting Year of the Horse, Permanent Vacation or The Limits of Control any time soon – but they are all uniquely his. That’s something worth admiring.

And now, basically because it’s expected, here is how I would rank Jarmusch’s films after having watching them anew over the past few weeks.

12. Year of the Horse (1997) – An annoying concert film, coupled with shallow interviews, makes this the least interesting film of Jarmusch’s career by far.

11. Permanent Vacation (1980) – Interesting only in seeing where Jarmusch’s starting point was – and how he fulfilled the promise he showed. Not very interesting as a film unto itself.

10. The Limits of Control (2009) – A very strange film that improved the second time through, but is still a little too obvious and too plodding to be really effective.

9. Night on Earth (1991) – One great sequence out of five, although the other four have their moments. Too long, too drawn out, but not without its pleasures.

8. Coffee & Cigarettes (2003) – 11 enjoyable shorts that add up to nothing, but has a lot of fun getting there.

7. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) – A touch too slight to be one of Jarmusch’s very best films, but extremely strange, always likable, with a great performance by Forest Whitaker.

6. Down By Law (1986)  -Seedy miserablism, giving way to comic energy in prison, to magic realism in the end, the film shouldn’t work as well as it does– but it somehow pulls it all off, not least because of great cinematography and a trio of great performances.

5. Broken Flowers (2005) – Jarmusch’s most mainstream effort is also his most conventionally satisfying, with one of the best performances in Bill Murray’s career.

4. Only Lovers Left Alive (2014) – I cannot see his latest moving any further down this list on a re-watch – it may even move up a notch or two.

3. Mystery Train (1989) – A trifecta of great stories of foreigners in Memphis, all revolving around a strange hotel. The first is the best, but all three are terrific.

2. Dead Man (1996) – The most ambitious, beautiful, brutally violent film of Jarmusch’s career – a Western as only he could make one.

1. Stranger Than Paradise (1984) – Still the best, as it all feels so perfectly structured – without a scene, line, shot or moment out of place. Jarmusch has certainly made more ambitious films, but not one as perfect as this one.

The Films of Jim Jarmusch: Only Lovers Left Alive

Only Lovers Left Alive
Directed by: Jim Jarmusch.
Written by: Jim Jarmusch.
Starring: Tilda Swinton (Eve), Tom Hiddleston (Adam), Anton Yelchin (Ian), Mia Wasikowska (Ava), John Hurt (Marlowe), Jeffrey Wright (Dr. Watson), Slimane Dazi (Bilal), Yasmine Hamdan (Yasmine).

Jim Jarmusch wasn’t interested in making a typical vampire movie when he made Only Lovers Left Alive – and thank god for that. Like he did with films such as his existential Western Dead Man (1996) and his East meets West gangster film Ghost Dog (1999), Jarmusch takes a well-worn genre and comes at in a completely different angle. What interests him most about vampires in Only Lovers Left Alive is how long they’ve been alive – that they’ve essentially been witnesses to centuries of human history, while remaining somewhat apart from it. The film is about two married vampires – Eve (Tilda Swinton), who lives in Tangiers, and commits the history of the written word to her memory, simply by passing her hands over the pages, and Adam (Tom Hiddleston) who lives in a rundown mansion in Detroit, producing his strange, avant-garde rock music. They may be half a world apart, but they can never escape each other – nor want to. Their connection runs deep enough that they don’t need to live with each other to share it. But Adam is feeling even more melancholy than usual – he’s on the verge of being suicidal – so Eve catches a series of planes – all leaving and arriving at night – and comes to Adam. The two talk about their shared history, the stupidity of people, or as they call them zombies (“They still doubt Darwin!”), they drink blood, procured from the local hospital, that seems them into a junkie-like stupor. For the first hour, I thought that nothing except this is going to happen in Only Lovers Left Alive – and I was completely okay with that.

This is Jarmusch’s first film he shot digitally (by Yorick Le Saux) – and it suits this movie, because as we’ve seen in many films – from Michael Mann’s Collateral to David Fincher’s Zodiac – darkness is what works best with digital. Jarmusch’s camera moves a little bit more than is typical in one of his movies – including a series of mesmerizing, revolving overheard shots that capture these vampires in repose. The majority of the movie takes place in Detroit – which Jarmusch sees as an almost abandoned city – no one is around when Adam and Eve drive around in their car. It suits Adam because he wants to be left alone. He was once a rock star, and now has obsessive followers who try and track him down. Only Ian (Anton Yelchin) knows where he lives – he’s the type of hanger on who will do anything for Adam, who is only too happy to pay him a lot of money to ensure that he is otherwise left alone. Adam spends his time amongst his old guitars, monologue amps, his vinyl records, and records his morose “noise rock” – which may or may not be interesting to listen to by itself, but works brilliantly in the movie, giving the whole thing an even more morose feel. Adam is frustrated by humanity, and growing depressed – Eve is slightly older and wiser, and blames Adam’s “early influences” (“Bryon, Keats and the French ones”) on his melancholy. She tries to convince him to see point in continuing to “live” – but all he sees in that humanity has poisoned their planet and “even their own blood”. Why go on?

A semblance of a plot arrives along with Eve’s younger sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska) – who lives in L.A. Adam hates her for something that happened in Paris, apparently 87 years ago. She is reckless and impulsive. While Eve and Adam take painstaking steps to ensure their privacy, Ava simply doesn’t care. She shows up unwanted and uninvited – but Eve cannot just throw her out. She sets in motion what little plot the movie has – and keeps the movie from becoming completely bogged down in all the melancholy. It’s another dynamic performance from the young Wasikowska.

But Swinton and Hiddleston are even better. They two share an androgynous look, and when we see their naked, pale bodies lying next to each other, it’s almost hard to tell them apart. Swinton has the perfect look to play a vampire (it’s hard to believe no one else had cast as one before) – but she’s the warmer of the pair – an almost maternal figure, who comforts Adam, and looks at humanity with pity more than Adam’s disgust. This is a reminder that Hiddleston – as good as he is as Loki in the Thor movies – can do far more than that smirking villain. One of their best friends is Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt) who wishes he had known Adam when he “was writing Hamlet” – and the pair do share a lot in common.

Only Lovers Left Alive is a film that I think only an older artist could make – one with experience and wisdom. Jarmusch is in his 60’s now, has been making movies for 30 years, and I think he shares much of Adam’s disdain and confusion about modern culture – a culture that seems to willfully cut itself off from its history, and remains happy in their stupidity. Adam keeps a wall of pictures of past geniuses (including Buster Keaton, a director whose career I’m immersing myself in right now) – but these are people who have long since been forgotten by most. It is a beautiful, mesmerizing film. Like all of Jarmusch’s films, it doesn’t really need a plot – he isn’t interested in one, and cramming these characters into one would somehow diminish them. For much of the movie, it seems like a downer – a look at humanity that offers little to no hope. And then the pair stumble across a bar in Tangiers, and a singer (Yasmine Hamdan) singing a beautiful song. This is something Adam hasn’t heard before – and it offers him hope. “She’ll be famous” Eve tells him. “I hope not” Adam responds “She’s too good for that”. That, in a nutshell, is what Only Lovers Left Alive is really about – and what makes it one of Jarmusch’s best films.

The Films of Jim Jarmusch: The Limits of Control (2009)

The Limits of Control (2009)
Directed by:   Jim Jarmusch.
Written by: Jim Jarmusch.
Starring: Isaach De Bankolé (The Lone Man), Alex Descas (The Creole), Jean-François Stévenin (The Frenchman), Óscar Jaenada (The Waiter), Luis Tosar (Man with Violin), Paz de la Huerta (The Nude Woman), Tilda Swinton (The Blonde), Yûki Kudô (Molecules), John Hurt (Man with Guitar), Gael García Bernal (The Mexican), Hiam Abbass (The Driver), Bill Murray (The American).

Have you ever fallen asleep briefly while watching a movie – perhaps for only a minute or two – and when you wake you feel slightly confused as to what is going on in the movie? Where you have a feeling that you have missed some vital piece of information that would make the movie you’re watching clearer? That feeling pretty much describes the feeling I had throughout Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control. The film stars Jarmusch favorite Isaach De Bankole as a character known as The Lone Man who has a series of meetings with various characters – most often over coffee, where The Lone Man insists on two espressos, in separate cups – not one large espresso. He exchanges colorful match books with the person he’s meeting, who always begins the conversation with “You don’t speak Spanish do you?” – in Spanish – which makes sense since the movie takes place in Spain, although the people he meets are from all over the world. The Lone Man than listens as his scene partner rattles on about something – movies, bohemians, capitalism, etc. – than the pair exchange something else, and The Lone Man goes on his way again. He has a definite end game, but the audience isn’t privy to it until the very end. Whatever it is, it’s certainly illegal.

More than even most of Jarmusch’s films, The Limits of Control is all style and little substance. Watching the film the first time in 2009, I was confused through much of it, but basically sat back and enjoyed isolated moments. Jarmusch knows how to write cryptic conversations that can be funny, confusing and interesting all at the same time, and he gets good performances from his cast. That’s the case here as it is amusing to see such talented actors as Alex Descas, Tilda Swinton, Yuki Kudoh, John Hurt, Gael Garcia Bernal and Hiam Abbas play characters with no backstory and no context come in for a scene, deliver what is essentially a monologue, whose meaning is left vague, than go on their way again. And in Isaach De Bankole, Jarmusch has found the perfect straight man – largely silent with a mysterious, unreadable look on his face for the entire movie, I could not help but be fascinated by him. Who is this guy?

Other scenes don’t work as well. Paz de la Huerta shows up as a character billed as The Nude Woman, because, well, she’s nude the whole time. This, sadly, seems to be all that many directors choose to do with de la Huerta, who undeniably looks great nude, but in films like this or Gaspar Noe’s Enter the Void isn’t really given anything else to do.

The scene eventually leads to a climax where The Lone Man confronts The American (Bill Murray), who talks about the same things everyone else did, but in a much different way – decrying them, instead of celebrating them. He is in a heavy guarded compound, and wants to know how The Lone Man got in – which is a good question since we don’t see him do it either. “I imagined my way in” he tells The American, before doing what he was sent there to do.

Jarmusch has said that he “wanted to make an action movie with no action, whatever that means” and in The Limits of Control, I guess he succeeded in doing that. I can easily imagine a movie with a similar structure being turned into a Paul Greengrass thriller, with The Lone Man meeting a series of contacts to get him next to his target, and then dispatching him with ease. All that’s missing is the gunfights from The Limits of Control – and of course, more perfunctory dialogue than Jarmusch gives his characters.

Watching the film a second time helped clarify things – not really in terms of plot, but in terms of what Jarmusch is trying to do in the film. I didn’t really like the film back in 2009, and I don’t really like it that much now. It’s too cryptic, too slight to be satisfying in any real way. It’s something though – and whatever that is, I think it’s what Jarmusch intended. Take from that what you will.

 
Note: I will be seeing Jarmusch’s latest film, Only Lovers Left Alive, today, and will write a review – and a conclusion to this series, next week.

The Films of Jim Jarmusch: Broken Flowers (2005)

Broken Flowers (2005)
Directed by: Jim Jarmusch.
Written by: Jim Jarmusch inspired by an idea from Bill Raden and Sara Driver.
Starring: Bill Murray (Don Johnston), Jeffrey Wright (Winston), Julie Delpy (Sherry), Alexis Dziena (Lolita), Sharon Stone (Laura), Frances Conroy (Dora), Christopher McDonald (Ron),  Chloë Sevigny (Carmen's Assistant), Jessica Lange (Carmen), Tilda Swinton (Penny), Pell James (Sun Green), Mark Webber (The Kid).

When writing about The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou recently as part of my series on Wes Anderson, I noted that I thought Anderson misused Bill Murray in that movie – that the movie required Murray to be too active, to drive too much of the plot, when Murray’s gifts are primarily reacting to others around him, more than driving the plot itself. A year after Anderson misused Murray (the only time in their fruitful collaboration that Anderson has), Jarmusch used Bill Murray perfectly in Broken Flowers. As Roger Ebert noted in his review of the film – “No actor is better than Bill Murray at doing nothing at all, and being fascinating while not doing it.” That perfectly describes Murray’s performance in this film – which is one of his very best.

Murray stars as Don Johnston, who latest younger girlfriend, Sherry (Julie Delphy) has decided to leave him – telling him she doesn’t want to be with an “aging Don Juan” anymore and complaining that she treats him like his mistress even though he’s not even married. Don doesn’t put up much of a fight when she leaves – he’s been through this before – he knows the drill. Then one day a letter arrives in the mail – it’s unsigned and on pink stationary. In it, someone claiming to be an old girlfriend tells Don that he has a son – now 19 – and he’s decided to leave to look for his father – even though he knows nothing of the man. She just thought he should be warned in case he does in fact track Don down. Don tells his friend Winston (Jeffrey Wright) about the letter – and Winston thinks he should track down this woman to determine if he does in fact have a son. The problem is that Don thinks it could be one of five different women. He gives the list to Winston, who makes the arrangements for Don to go and visit the women one at a time – well, at least four of them, because the fifth died in a car accident a few years before. Don, begrudgingly, decides to take the trip.

So Don sets out, driving from house to house (“I’m a stalker, in a Taurus”, he complains to Winston over the phone) on a journey into his past, and gets four vastly different reactions from the women he has left behind. The first, Laura (Sharon Stone), holds no grudges – and is happy to see Don, invites him in, and he even spends the night. The comic highlight of this segment is Laura’s daughter, the appropriately named Lolita (Alexis Dziena), who is casually half dressed the whole time unless she is completely naked, but has either perfected her act of naiveté, or really doesn’t understand what she is doing.  This is the happiest stop for Don – even though he never manages a smile.

From there, it’s onto Dora (Frances Conroy) – a woman who lives a picture perfect life, in a picture perfect house in a picture perfect suburb with a picture perfect husband, Ron (Christopher McDonald), serving picture perfect dinners and is perfectly, utterly miserable. The woman Don once knew – who we catch a glimpse of in an old photograph – is gone. Dora seems on the verge of tears the whole time, and can barely make eye contact with Don, let alone speak. She is a broken woman – although precisely what broke her is never stated, only hinted at.

Then there’s Carmen (Jessica Lange) – who wanted to be a lawyer when Don knew her all those years before, and now has a lucrative career communicating with animals – she cannot “read animals minds”, but she can communicate with them – if they want to tell her something, she can hear it. She gained this power when her dog – Winston – died many years ago. She’s friendly to Don – but quite clearly wants nothing to do with him (“Do you want to get a drink later?”, I don’t drink”, “Something to eat then?”, “I don’t … eat”). There’s a passive-aggressive way she – and her assistant (Chloe Sevigny) deal with Don that makes it clear he isn’t wanted.

That passive-aggressive behavior is at least preferable to what Don gets when he visits Penny (Tilda Swinton – in her first Jarmusch movie – she’s been in the only two he’s made since). She doesn’t attempt to hide her contempt for him, and he ends up getting beat up for his trouble – and never really gets an answer from her.

In many ways, Broken Flowers is the most mainstream, conventional film of Jarmusch’s career. His penchant for long takes is still apparent – but not as noticeable here, as he gives the film a more typical “Sundance” look than any of his other films. The screenplay is also a touch more conventional – certainly when compared to his two prior features (not including the short film collection Coffee & Cigarettes) Dead Man and Ghost Dog. He fills the cast with stars – although that’s not all that new to Jarmusch – he is working with many of them for the first (and so far last) time. This was, as far as I know, the only film Jarmusch has made directly for a branch of a studio instead of finding independent financing – and it shows a little bit.

Yet just because Broken Flowers is slightly more conventional that most of Jarmusch’s work, that doesn’t mean it’s worse. The film is also the most conventionally satisfying of Jarmusch’s career – yet still does leave the ending daringly ambiguous. The movie provides a few different answers at the end of the film, but no real resolution - and when you consider Dora’s line earlier in the film “I didn’t think I could be a good mother to Ron’s children”, which doesn’t exactly confirm that she doesn’t have any children, just not Ron’s children, or if you consider that someone could have been writing on behalf of the one woman who died, while posing as her, the film implies even more possible solutions. But Don may never get the answer – look at the sad, mournful way he looks at a young man driving by in a car in the film’s haunting final shot. For him there is no closure – and perhaps he doesn’t deserve any. Any man, who when faced with a possible child of 19, that comes up with five different women who could be the mother, obviously has some issues with women – something confirmed by the women’s reaction to Don when he shows up. Some may have moved on with their lives, but they aren’t really interested in Don anymore – or reliving old times – except for Laura, of course.

What Murray does in Broken Flowers is quietly brilliant. I have never seen Murray look so sad before – or since – in a movie. He’s reached an age – he was in his mid-50s then – when his life is set. He has become a success – has lots of money that he made with computers, but he doesn’t like his career (he doesn’t even own a computer). He sits and stares sadly at the TV. His one friend is Winston – and he sees that Winston has chosen the opposite life of his – one woman, many kids – and seems perfectly content. Whereas Don has lived the life that we are told many men would love – hoping from one beautiful woman to the next – and has been left empty – longing for something more it’s too late for him to get.

 
All of this probably makes Broken Flowers seem more of a downer than it really is. The film is funny – but like with all of Jarmusch’s film, it’s a subtle humor – not really laugh out loud funny, but something a touch quieter and deeper. This is probably as mainstream of a film as Jarmusch is ever going to make – and it still stands out from the pack of the regular Sundance indies we see every year. It’s a deeper, darker film. And it’s one I find that grows in my mind each time I watch it.

The Films of Jim Jarmusch: Coffee & Cigarettes (2003)

Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)
Directed by: Jim Jarmusch.
Written by: Jim Jarmusch.
Starring: Roberto Benigni (Roberto), Steven Wright (Steven), Joie Lee (Good Twin), Cinqué Lee (Evil Twin), Steve Buscemi (Waiter), Iggy Pop (Iggy), Tom Waits (Tom), Joseph Rigano (Joe), Vinny Vella (Vinny), Vinny Vella Jr. (Vinny Jr.), Renee French (Renée), E.J. Rodriguez (Waiter), Alex Descas (Alex), Isaach De Bankolé (Isaach), Cate Blanchett (Cate / Shelly), Jack White (Jack), Meg White (Meg), Alfred Molina (Alfred), Steve Coogan (Steve), The GZA (GZA), RZA (RZA), Bill Murray (Bill Murray), William Rice (Bill), Taylor Mead (Taylor).

Coffee and Cigarettes is a series of 11 short films shot over nearly 20 years by Jim Jarmusch – all revolving around two or three characters talking over – you guessed it – coffee and cigarettes. Some of the segments are funny, some are introspective – some are both. Some are meaningless or slight, and others address celebrity and other issues. None of them are really misfires – although some certainly work better than others – but all run less than 10 minutes each, so if you don’t like what’s onscreen, you don’t have to wait very long.

In order, the films are about: the manic Roberto Benigni meeting the ever calm Steve Wright; Cinque and Joie Lee in Memphis talking with their waiter – Steve Buscemi with a ridiculous accent – about how Elvis stole African American music; Iggy Pop and Tom Waits trying to passive aggressively one up each other; Joe Rigano and Vinny Vella discussing their health – and the actions of Vinny Jr.; Renee French and her exacting routine of how she likes her coffee, ruined by an overly attentive waiter; Alex Descas and Isaach De Bankole talking around an incident in their shared past; Cate Blanchatt meeting up with her less well to do cousin; Jack White showing Meg White his Tesla coil; Alfred Molina telling Steve Coogan that his genealogical research has revealed their cousins, and thinking it would make an excellent movie; GZA and RZA being baffled that the coffee shop they’re in is being run by an ever strange Bill Murray; and William Rice and Taylor Mead talking about everything and nothing. All 11 films are shot in black and white, and take place in a coffee shop – some rundown, some slightly more upscale, where they characters are basically alone – allowed to speak freely, enjoy some coffee and a cigarette. The film lacks any real ambition – it basically just wants to be precisely what it seems like – a series of coffee and cigarette breaks.

Of course, some of the segments work better than others. My favorite is probably Iggy Pop and Tom Waits – mainly for the way Waits takes subtle jabs at Iggy Pop the whole time through – from his explanation as to why he’s late (they was a traffic pileup, and he had to perform roadside surgery) to goading him into having a cigarette, to his perfect final line. Iggy Pop tries to keep up, but Waits is just that much better of a bullshit artist than he is. Close is Blanchatt’s sequence, where she plays both herself, trying very hard to nice to her cousin, and her cousin who resents her cousin – and not wholly without reason to. It’s a little tour-de-force from Blanchatt. And Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan’s segment is probably the out and out funniest – as Molina seems so innocently happy to be meeting with Coogan, and Coogan is such an asshole at first, that we watch as Molina gradually has his hopes dashed – only to end up with the upper hand. Coogan is so good at playing himself as an asshole – but perhaps never more so than here.

At the other end of the spectrum are the ones that don’t work as well as Jarmusch probably intended. Renee French’s sequence is perhaps too slight, too subtle to even register – it’s the one I always forget about. The final sequence, with Bill Rice and Taylor Mead has the feeling like it’s building to something that never quite arrives. Jack and Meg White aren’t particularly good actors – although it is amusing to wonder why exactly Jack White wants a Telsa coil in the first place. The other segments fall somewhere in between.

Yet even the least successful sequences offer a few pleasures, or something to think about. Jarmusch has made this type of before of course – Night on Earth was shot as a feature, but had the same overreaching feel. Coffee and Cigarettes lacks the ambition of Night on Earth, which really did try to find the connecting tissue between its segments, but it’s more successful as a film because the sequences all feel the right length – they don’t overstay their welcome.

The film doesn’t add up to some grand design or theme. Jarmusch isn’t really interested in that. Instead, he’s made a series of 11 shorts that all offer something. You can criticize the film for being meaningless if you want – but when a film offers this many pleasures, does it really matter if it all adds up to nothing?

The Films of Jim Jarmusch: Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)
Directed by: Jim Jarmusch.
Written by: Jim Jarmusch.
Starring: Forest Whitaker (Ghost Dog), John Tormey (Louie), Cliff Gorman (Sonny Valerio), Frank Minucci (Big Angie), Richard Portnow (Handsome Frank), Tricia Vessey (Louise Vargo), Henry Silva (Ray Vargo), Victor Argo (Vinny), Isaach De Bankolé  (Raymond), Camille Winbush (Pearline), Gary Farmer (Nobody).

In his review of Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, Roger Ebert wonders why more people didn’t point out what he sees as the fact that the main character in the film is insane. Ebert’s reasoning is solid. Forest Whitaker plays the title character in modern day Jersey City as a mob assassin who lives by the ancient rules of the samurai and communicates only by carrier pigeons. That’s not normal behavior – and in fact one of the film’s funniest scenes has Louie (John Tormey), the mobster Ghost Dog works for, try and explain to his bosses what Ghost Dog’s name is and why he can’t just call him up *”Did you just say he contacts you through a bird?”). Perhaps the reason why no one mentions that Ghost Dog is insane, despite all the evidence that he is, is because he’s seems so calm, so sure of himself at every moment in the film. He lives by a code in a world where no one else does – and is willing to do anything for that code. He lives the way he does because it makes sense to him in a world where nothing else does. It gives him something to hold onto.

Like all of Jim Jarmusch’s films, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai is strange from the beginning – it has to rank among the strangest films about a hit man ever made. Whitaker’s Ghost Dog gets himself in trouble – through no fault of his own – when he completes the first job we see him given in the movie. He is to take out a mobster who is sleeping with the boss’ daughter, Louise (Tricia Vessey). He does so, but is seen by the Louise, mean her father decides he needs to take out Ghost Dog – and perhaps Louie, the man Ghost Dog works for as well. Ghost Dog is loyal to Louie – he is his retainer, and Ghost Dog treats him as a samurai would his master – he is willing to do anything for him. With both his own life, and Louie’s, on the line, Ghost Dog decides to do the only thing he can – and kill every other mobster around. These scenes of harsh, brutal violence are contrasted against some gentler ones of Ghost Dog interacting with his best friend, Raymond (Jarmusch regular Isaach De Bankolé), who speaks no English, and because Ghost Dog doesn’t speak French, neither knows what the other one is saying – and a young girl named Pearline (Camille Wimbush). At times, there almost seem to be two movies going on – with only Whitaker’s eerily calm Ghost Dog connecting them.

Like his other movies, Ghost Dog is basically about an outsider – someone who doesn’t fit in with the world around him, but doesn’t really want to either. This is one of Whitaker’s best performances – the one that springs immediately to mind whenever I think of the actor. He may have won an Oscar for going over the top nasty (brilliantly) in The Last King of Scotland (2006) – but Whitaker has mainly made a career out of playing men who are somewhat gentler than his hulking appearance suggests. His Ghost Dog is willing, and able, to kill without feeling or remorse – but neither does he take pleasure in it. He is spookily calm at every point in the movie, and this makes him a strange character to center a movie around – but a perfect one for Jarmusch.

Jarmusch has fun in other areas of Ghost Dog as well – the gangsters in the film aren’t so much realistic as they are parodies of movie gangsters, and Jarmusch has fun with them as they discuss hip hop, or in one scene dance around to rap music, before Ghost Dog’s most inventive kill. Jarmusch also throws in the strange view of a man building a boat on his rooftop – how’s he going to get it down, no one knows – but it shows that at least Ghost Dog isn’t the only insane person living in this world. Gary Farmer shows up here again for one scene – once again playing a character named Nobody, and like in Dead Man, delivers the perfect line “Stupid fucking white man”. For all I know, he’s the same character as in Dead Man – more than a century later, but still going strong.

Ghost Dog is a little slighter than much of Jarmusch’s work. Like always, he’s not so much interested in plot as he is in character and mood – but at nearly two hours, the film certainly drags at points, and starts to feel repetitive. But he’s clearly having fun playing around in genre film. It isn’t the genre twisting masterwork of Dead Man, but it’s an odd, strangely hypnotic film. I’ve never seen anything quite like before – and I doubt I’ll see anything like it again anytime soon.

The Films of Jim Jarmusch: Year of the Horse (1997)

Year of the Horse (1997)
Directed by: Jim Jarmusch.
Featuring: Neil Young and Crazy Horse.

In 1995-96, Jim Jarmusch and Neil Young collaborated on two films together. The first was Jarmusch’s Dead Man – one of his best films, and features a haunting, guitar driven score by Young. The second was Year of the Horse, a documentary about Young and his long time band Crazy Horse – which is perhaps the worst film Jarmusch has ever directed. Jarmusch had never made a documentary before, and it shows in his interviewing skills – as he gets almost nothing of any value from Young, the other members of the band or anyone else he interviews. He even keeps not one, not two, but three different instances of the guitar player basically saying that no outsider can possibly come in and document what 30 years together is really like. By the third time he says it, it feels like a confession on Jarmusch’s part – he really doesn’t capture what being together that long is like.

The movie is made up mostly of concert footage shot in 1996 – along with new interviews – shot, it appears, in someone’s dingy laundry room for reasons I do not understand as well as footage from previous tours in 1986 and 1976. The old footage, presented without context, really doesn’t add anything to the movie – except to show you how much Young and everyone else has aged over the 20 years the footage spans. The one exception could be a scene where Young is angry because the other members screwed up the arrangement on stage that night (we do not see footage of that, of course) – which hints at the more complex relationship Young and this band actually has, that Jarmusch was unable to capture. There is a reason that Young continues to come back and record and tour with Crazy Horse  -it seems like it recharges their batteries. They have a sound that is described throughout the movie as “raw” and their concerts basically look like jam sessions. Yet there is also a reason why Young often records his best music with others and not Crazy Horse – and why he has at times started recording with Crazy Horse, and then re-recorded everything with other musicians. The members of Crazy Horse admit there are a lot better musicians out there then they are – and Young knows it as well. You’ll hear a lot of songs in Year of the Horse – and none of them are among the best of Young’s long career. Young can go on all he likes about his while everyone else’s jacket says “Neil Young and Crazy Horse”, while his just says Crazy Horse – but they really are Neil Young and Crazy Horse. The other band members are not on Young’s level – and they all know it. Any bitterness, resentment or anger there may be is left off-screen, which is disappointing.

Basically, the interviews are shallow and superficial. They offer no real insight into what makes this band work as well as they do, or what has kept them together. Either Jarmusch lacked the skills to get the band to be introspective, or else they didn’t want to go there and Jarmusch didn’t push. You aren’t really going to learn much from them.

But this is, more than anything, a concert documentary – so who cares about the interviews as long as the music is great, right? That would be true, except the music in Year of the Horse isn’t all that good. I’m a Neil Young fan – and I loved Jonathan Demme’s Heart of Gold – another Young concert doc from a few years ago. Yet in Year of the Horse, the songs go on forever. Basically the band sings the first verse and the chorus of each song, and then the whole thing quickly devolves into minute after minute of what would charitably described as a “jam session” – that is mainly wordless, with guitar that provide more feedback than anything else. It doesn’t help that Jarmusch decided to shoot on Super 8 (and “Proudly”, the opening credits inform us) – which I suppose was an attempt to make the film look as “raw” as the band – but basically has the effect of making everything look dingy, grimy and dirty – and also hurts the sound quality. I don’t think shooting on any type of film would have saved some of the songs – that drone on and on and on for what seems like forever (I think a few hit 10 minutes) – but it couldn’t possibly have hurt.

Some directors are naturals when they move over the documentary films from a long career in features. Martin Scorsese has been able to make several great docs – and two great concert films as well. Spike Lee has been able to cross that line as well. As Year of the Horse is still the only documentary and concert film on Jarmusch’s resume, the evidence so far suggests he is not one of those directors. Apparently he’s working on a documentary about The Stooges. Hopefully he learned some lessons from Year of the Horse, and that film will be better than this one. But if I learn nothing else from that other than that Iggy Popp’s jacket just said The Stooges, and everyone else’s jacket says Iggy Popp & the Stooges, I’ll be disappointed.

The Films of Jim Jarmusch: Dead Man (1995)

Dead Man (1995)
Directed by: Jim Jarmusch.
Written by: Jim Jarmusch.
Starring: Johnny Depp (William Blake), Gary Farmer (Nobody), Lance Henriksen (Cole Wilson), Michael Wincott (Conway Twill), Eugene Byrd (Johnny 'The Kid' Pickett), Crispin Glover (Train Fireman), John Hurt (John Scholfield), Robert Mitchum (John Dickinson), Iggy Pop (Salvatore 'Sally' Jenko), Jared Harris (Benmont Tench), Gabriel Byrne (Charlie Dickinson), Mili Avital (Thel Russell), Jimmie Ray Weeks  (Marvin, Older Marshal), Mark Bringelson (Lee, Younger Marshal), Billy Bob Thornton (Big George Drakoulious), Alfred Molina (Trading Post Missionary).

 

Dead Man is an odd film. It’s an existential Western that paints a cold, violent, dark picture of the American West, basically concluding that the American West was a brutal place – and perhaps America hasn’t changed much since. The film is almost like a slow descent into hell. It’s a film that takes its time – as all Jarmusch films do – so if you’re not on its wavelength, the film is probably a long, dull slog. But if you are with Jarmusch, than the film is haunting – beautiful and mournful in between the sudden bursts of violence. To some it’s Jarmusch’s masterpiece, to others it’s one of his worst films. I’m more in the former camp than the later.

Johnny Depp stars as William Blake – not the poet - an accountant who is taking a long train ride from the big city of Cleveland way out to the end of line – a little town called Machine, where he has been promised a jump at the Dickinson Metal Works. The train ride that takes up the pre-credits sequence is like the film itself – long, slow, surreal at times, as everyone seems to be staring as Blake as if he’s an alien creature – which in some ways he is. Before he’s even arrived, the Train Fireman (Crispin Glover at his most Crispin Glover-esque) warns him away from Machine. But Blake doesn’t listen. He shows up at the Metal Works, and is told by John Scholfield (John Hurt) that he’s too late – the job has been filled. Blake is laughed at by Scholfield, and the rest of the office workers, but insists on seeing Mr. Dickenson himself. He is played by Robert Mitchum, in his last film role, a big bear of man, smoking a huge cigar, and wielding a shotgun. Blake quickly realizes his journey has been for nothing.

At the local bar he meets Thel Russell (Mili Avital) – a woman who sells paper flowers. Blake is nicer than the rest of the men of Machine – he doesn’t mock her, treat her like a whore, or throw her and her flowers in the mud. He ends up in her hotel room for the right. Early the next morning, Charlie Dickinson (Gabriel Byrne) – son of Mitchum – shows up. He was once Thel’s fiancé, and wants to patch things up. Things quickly go awry; shots are fired leaving Thel and Charlie dead, and Blake with a wound to the chest that should have killed him. He runs off into the wild, where he meets Nobody (Gary Farmer) – a Native who is an outsider even among other Natives, who thinks Blake is the poet – and decides to help him. He needs all the help he can get, because Dickinson has hired three assassins – Cole Wilson (Lance Henrickson), Conway Twill (Michael Wincott) and Johnny “The Kid” Pickett (Eugene Byrd) to track Blake down and kill him. The three aren’t thrilled to be working together, and are just as likely to kill each other as kill Blake.

Given his previous work, Dead Man marked a departure of sorts for Jarmusch – he’s working in a genre film for the first time (there are some hints of genre in Down By Law, but not entirely) – and he remains focused on a single character from beginning to end. Yet the film is still every inch a Jarmusch film. The gorgeous black and white photography by Robby Muller makes this the most visually stunning film of Jarmusch’s career. He still favors long takes though. The framing is a little off-kilter – nothing seems to be in the middle of the frame, giving the film a more surreal look. When the violence comes in the film – and it comes often – it’s quick, brutal and deadly. There are no protracted gun fights in Dead Man – I was reminded of a line in Ed Harris’ Appaloosa when his character was asked why the gunfight was over so quickly and he responds “Because everyone knew how to shoot”. That’s the case here as well – although sometimes, it ends quickly because the characters don’t really play fair with each other – killing them when they are not expecting it.

Johnny Depp’s performance is one of his finest. This was the period of his career before he became a huge, bankable movie star and was interested in doing odd, quirky little films and didn’t seem to care if they would make him a movie star. Now, he does almost nothing but huge blockbusters, and tries very hard to be odd and quirky in them all – but it’s wearing a little thin, as all of them start blending together as basically, they are all variations on Captain Jack Sparrow (tellingly, his last great performance was in Michael Mann’s Public Enemies – 2009 - where he mainly played it straight). Here, he’s got a baby face, and seems almost hopelessly naïve when the film begins – he doesn’t belong in Machine, which is the most alien city in Jarmusch’s filmography full of alien cities. He is a stranger in a world he doesn’t understand. Gradually, his William Blake learns the rules of land he inhabits, and becomes the vicious man he needs to become to survive. But by then it’s already too late. You can take the title of the movie a number of ways, but basically, I think Blake is dead pretty much the moment he’s shot by Charlie – he just doesn’t realize it yet. He goes from a man who comically takes shot after shot at Charlie before getting lucky and hits him, into being a crack shot with his gun. Nobody views him with a kind of pity as the pair makes their way West to the Pacific Ocean. Farmer is Depp’s match in terms of weirdness – his talk is profane, yet witty and funny – and he seems to be smiling to himself often – as if he’s in on a joke that Blake hasn’t gotten yet.

Jarmusch surrounds these two with the oddest assortment of characters imaginable – from Crispin Glover looking and sounding like something released from the bowels of hell, to John Hurt’s laughing maniac, to Mitchum who is great, as always, by just being Mitchum – to the trio of hit men on their trial. The most brutal of the three is Lance Henrickson, who doesn’t say much, but doesn’t have to – when the rumor about you is that you raped, killed and ate both of your parents, you don’t need to say much to look menacing. Michael Wincott, as one of the other assassins, almost never shuts up putting him at odds with Henrickson from the start. Then there’s the odd scene with three fur trappers – Jared Harris, Billy Bob Thornton and Iggy Pop, in a frontier dress, which is as odd as it sounds.

The most remarkable thing about Dead Man is how it maintains its surreal tone throughout the film. The cinematography helps, as does Neil Young’s guitar and feedback heavy score. As the film winds down, it becomes more wordless, moves a little bit slower than a pace that to many was already too slow – yet remains utterly transfixing. This is Jarmusch at his best. He offers a bleak worldview, for the first time not tempered with humor, and delivers a portrait of the West we haven’t really seen before or since. It’s one of the few Western post-Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992) that really gives us something different. When Depp discovers a gun under Thel’s pillow he asks her what she has it for. “This is America” she tells him as if it explains everything. To Jarmusch, it does. His Dead Man paints a bleak, brutal, violent picture of the American West – and it’s one of his best films.

The Films of Jim Jarmusch: Five Music Videos and One Omnibus Segment

Music Videos: The Lady Don’t Mind – The Talking Heads (1986), Sightsee M.C.! – Big Audio Dynamite (1987), It’s All Right with Me – Tom Waits (1990), I Don’t Wanna Grow Up – Tom Waits (1992), Dead Man Theme – Neil Young (1995), Steady as She Goes – The Raconteurs (2006)

Omnibus Segment: Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet – Int. Trailer Night (2002)

In addition to the 10 feature films, and one documentary, that Jim Jarmusch directed before Only Lovers Left Alive – he also has a string of short films, music videos and one segment of an omnibus film on his resume. His shorts have all become a part of one of his features – he finished Stranger Than Paradise in 1982, when it was a half hour and then added the second and third segments for the 1984 feature version. He made Coffee and Cigarettes in 1986, Coffee and Cigarettes II in 1989 and Coffee and Cigarettes III in 1993 – and incorporated them with 8 other segments for the 2003 feature version. During the course of his career he also directed 6 music videos and one segment of an omnibus film entitled 10 Minutes Older: The Trumpet. In this post, I’ll look at these. I have to admit I don’t think the music videos – some of them good, some not – really add much to Jarmusch’s resume – but I did quite like the short.

Jarmusch’s first music video was for The Talking Heads The Lady Don’t Mind in 1986. I’ve never been a big Talking Heads fan (even though it’s considered one of the best concert movies ever made, this is why I still haven’t seen Jonathan Demme’s Stop Making Sense) – but even their fans have to admit that The Lady Don’t Mind, while far from a bad song, is not one of the band’s best. It’s no Psycho Killer, Burning Down the House or any of their other great songs. It’s merely an average Talking Head song – and if you’re not a big fan to begin with, it’s rather forgettable. Regrettably, the video for the song is even worse – as it trots out one 1980s music video cliché after another – the most regrettable being the animated flashes of color (playing cards in particular) that flash in the background as the band plays the song in black and white. It looks like every other cheesy rock video from the 1980s. Overall, not a very good start to Jarmusch’s music video filmography.

His second video, a year later, for Big Audio Dynamite’s Sightsee M.C.! isn’t any better. The band, fronted by The Clash singer/guitarist Mick Jones mixes in musical samples and is part rock, part dance, part hip hop – and (sorry) was for me almost completely forgettable. This album, Big Audio Dynamite’s second, was produced by fellow Clash member (and future Mystery Train star) Joe Strummer, who also co-wrote a few songs on the album – but for me, they don’t really capture much of The Clash magic – at least not in Sightsee M.C.! The video shot by Jarmusch isn’t very good – it’s in black and white – but is basically made up of video clichés – the band walking towards a backtracking camera while singing the song (including Jones, in an interesting hat), and slow motion shots of individuals dancing to their song. There’s really not much else here, and the five minute video kind of drags. In short, Jarmusch’s first two videos seem like he did for very little reason other than to work with musicians he admires – and there’ worse reasons to do things – although one wonders why he and the bands agreed to do the videos if Jarmusch was just going to repeat music video clichés.

Jarmusch’s next two music videos however would be quite different – and quite entertaining as well. As part of a 1990 TV special entitled Red Hot and Blue which was made up of videos by contemporary artists and filmmakers (included Wim Wenders, Alex Cox, Jonathan Demme, Neil Jordan, Edward Lachman) singing Cole Porter songs. Jarmusch did the video for friend and frequent collaborator Tom Waits’ cover of It’s All Right With Me. The song is almost unintelligible – I have no idea what the hell the words to the song are, as Waits, whose wonderful, gravelly voice isn’t always clear in the best of circumstances, mumbles throughout. Jarmusch seems to follow this lead with the video itself – shot in almost blurry black and white, the video is made up of alternating scenes – the first with Waits dancing around what appears to be someone suburban’s back yard as only Waits could do (it’s no Christopher Walken in Weapon of Choice – but it’s not bad) – and the other scenes of Waits and Jarmusch himself driving around the neighbourhood, with a camera that seems to be floating around their heads, sometimes looking at the street, sometimes at their distorted faces, and sometimes at the floor. It’s an ever strange video – do not look for coherence in it – but never less than interesting – and probably the perfect one for Waits’ version of the song.

Two years later, Jarmusch would team up with Waits again – for a more traditional video for Waits’ I Don’t Wanna Grow Up. Once again, the pair seem to want to make something wholly different from most music videos – and succeed. Again, the video alternates between two types of scenes. In one, Waits rides around on a bicycle in a cheap devil costume, occasionally stopping to looking into the camera with a magnifying glass in front of his mouth. It’s as strange as it sounds. The even better part has Waits on his knees on a miniature stage, with a miniature guitar singing the song. It’s a more straight forward video than their first, but more satisfying as well – I like the song more, and the video never ceased to amuse me. With the two Waits videos, Jarmusch seems to be allowing himself to play around a little bit more – a good thing after two standard issued, and rather dull, videos in the 1980s.

His next video followed a few years later – for Neil Young’s haunting Dead Man Theme, for Jarmusch’s movie of the same name. It is basically made up of shots from the movie, intercut with shots of Young, by himself, playing the song on his guitar. Because much of the video is from Dead Man itself, it is utterly beautiful – and the shots of Young playing his guitar fit in better than you would anticipate. The wordless song itself is brilliant – like all of Young’s music for Dead Man. It was probably an easy video to put together, but that doesn’t stop it from being utterly unique – and one I’ve found myself revisiting more than once.

Jarmusch wouldn’t make another music video for a decade – returning with what is (so far) his final video – for The Raconteurs 2006 hit Steady As She Goes. The video was filmed at a rundown farmhouse – with scenes of the band performing the song in what appears to be the attic, intercut with shots (and occasionally sounds) of cows running in a field. Like all of the videos Jarmusch has directed, there is nothing here that really indicates his hand in the video – other than perhaps the film used to make the video, which is grainy than normal, and recalls (at least somewhat) the grain in his documentary for Neil Young Year of the Horse (perhaps I’m stretching too much here). In fact, this video features more camera movement and editing than most Jarmusch features. I liked the video though – it’s somewhat odd, but memorable, and I’m a Jack White fan to begin with, so I liked the song as well. If this marks the end of his music video career (and so far, it does), I don’t think one can say it’s been a particularly distinguished one for Jarmusch – but it hasn’t been awful either.

A few years before Steady As She Goes, Jarmursch took part in his first and only omnibus film. I find this a little strange, because Jarmusch has shown himself more than capable of telling stories in short format – be it in the shorts that comprise Coffee and Cigarettes, or the different segments of Stranger Than Paradise, Mystery Train or Night on Earth, which are almost shorts in their own right. Still 2002’s 10 Minutes Older – The Trumpet (there is a companion piece, 10 Minutes Older – The Cello) is so far the only one he has participated in. Whether that’s because he doesn’t want to, or he hasn’t been asked, I don’t know – but he would be on my list every time for an omnibus films – especially the ones built around a specific city, as Jarmusch has shown he often has unique takes on famous cities. Anyway, the overarching concept of 10 Minutes Older: The Trumpet is to combine several famous directors 10 minute short films, dealing with “what time means at the beginning of the 21^st Century”. Jarmusch makes a film about an actress (Chloe Sevigny) who is given a ten minute break in her trailer. She’s supposed to be able to relax, eat some food, smoke a cigarette before heading back to work. Instead, she has to take a phone call. And while she’s on the phone, one person after another comes barging into the trailer “Can I just check your hair?”, “Can I just check your makeup?” – the funniest one being the guy who asks if he can check her microphone – and then pretty much gropes her entire body, which she doesn’t find strange at all.

The message to the short I think is simple and obvious – even when we’re supposed to get time to relax, so much crap is going on that we never get a chance to. We can never unplug, unwind, having a single moment to ourselves. It’s not exactly an original message – but it’s a good one anyway. The film is brilliantly shot by Frederick Elmes – there aren’t many cuts in it as Jarmusch prefers to let everything play out in in real time. It’s a quiet, but generally funny and quite moving little film in its own way.

In short, the music videos are a mixed bag – ranging from mediocre, to entertaining to transfixing and back again. Jarmusch has always loved music – you see it in each of his films – and he seems to use his music videos more as an excuse to hang out with artists he admires – with only the Waits’ videos truly pushing for anything different. The omnibus segment is quietly funny and moving – and definitely part of Jarmusch’s overall work. I hadn’t seen any of them before doing this series – but for the most part, I enjoyed watching this time. They don’t add anything “new” to your understanding of Jarmusch – but they’re mostly still worth your time if you’re a Jarmusch fan.

Note: In case anyone is wondering why I placed this piece here – the answer is simple. I really didn’t feel that any of the individual videos, or the short, really needed a separate post of its own, which is why I combined them all into one long post. But since I am going through  Jarmusch’s films chronological, that presented a problem of where to place this piece. So, as an accountant, I do what I always do and turn to the numbers – when I take the average of all the years the videos and short were produced, I came up with 1994, so it slots in here. It’s a nice place to put it – we’re five films into a 10 film narrative career – although I’ll have do another digression, with Jarmusch’s Neil Young doc Year of the Horse next week as well.