JIM JARMUSCH
SPEZIALGEBIET ENGLISCH
Table of Contents
Style and Characters. 3
Themes. 6
Influence, Impact & Legacy. 8
“Down by Law”. 10
“The Limits of Control”. 12
Style and Characters
From his first film on Jim Jarmusch has formed a highly idiosyncratic and unique trademark style of movie making, which should be intensified by his second film “Stranger than Paradise”, setting the tone for his work to come.
Namely his use of prolonged uninterrupted takes, long tracking shots featuring extended silent scenes, and very little camera movement punctuated by an occasional fade to black, creates a brooding and contemplative atmosphere accompanied by a rather slow and meandering pace.
Furthermore forming his idiosyncratic style, there is his specific attitude of narrative, coming across as defiantly non-dramatic and non-explanatory. Jarmusch refers to it as some kind of “action film without action, a suspense film without the drama of suspense.” It seems that he intends to avoid any action in the traditional sense, risking thereby crossing the boundaries of boredom, but never going beyond.
What he does cross are the tight bounds of conventional mainstream cinema. With his oblique style, vague and full of hard-to-decode allusions, he offers the audience something different, something to think about.
Another characteristic of Jim Jarmusch is his frequent use of black and white film stock: half of his ten feature films are shot in black and white. Whether he wants to create a dirty, rough atmosphere, gain some historical distance, or neutralize a certain familiarity, Jarmusch knows exactly how and when to use it.
Regarding his work, one notices that Jim Jarmusch has a soft spot for anthology films as well.
After all 30% of his movies are such films, namely “Mystery Train”, “Night on Earth” and “Coffee and Cigarettes”.
However it would not be Jarmusch’s signature tone without the pervasion of a sharp wit, deadpan or dark humor, which surrounds every movie. Far away from any slapstick comedy, he amuses the viewer rather with strange and weird dialogs, which are nevertheless frequently filled with veiled criticism, like when a Hungarian immigrant explains the benefits of “American” TV dinner to his uninterested cousin (“Stanger than Paradise”).
But Jarmusch manages also to entertain with the mere exposure of absurd and sometimes surreal situations, like having Jack and Meg White talking about Nikola Tesla (“Coffee and Cigarettes”).
Finally it is the constant repetition of sentences or incidents (e.g.: “Usted no habla español, verdad?" [“The Limits of Control”]), leaning towards running gags that Jarmusch has added to his repertoire.
A very important role in the work of Jim Jarmusch plays the music. He himself believes that the soundtrack is one of the most important elements in his films.
A way to indulge his love to music is casting frequently musicians as actors: Tom Waits, John Lurie and Iggy Pop performed in several of Jarmusch’s movies, but they are not the only ones: Richard Edson in “Stranger than Paradise” Joe Strummer and Screamin' Jay Hawkins both in “Mystery Train”, Jack and Meg White in “Coffee and Cigarettes”, and many more.
Yet Jarmusch’s fascination for music goes on: “For me, always when I start writing, I start listening to music that is opening my imagination for that particular world or thing that I’m imagining.”
In excess of this source of inspiration the soundtrack is frequently a key to the textures of his movies and it does not occur seldom that the scenes without dialogue but just music are the ones that remain stuck in our memories after watching the film: Chris Parker dancing to some jazz in his flat (“Permanent Vacation”), the repetition of Hawkins' song "I Put a Spell on You" (“Stranger than Paradise”), the distinctive score of Neil Young (“Dead Man”) and not to forget the unique soundtrack to “The Limits of Control”, among others.
In each scene the music is part of Jarmusch’s tools to create the contemplative atmosphere mentioned above, or to set the respective pace.
Being a musician, Jarmusch contributes himself parts of the score to some of his movies. Especially in “The Limits of Control” some of his band’s (“Bad Rabbit”) songs are included, what he explains as follows: “[…] I found that I didn’t have pieces […] that were working right for some scenes. So I thought we’ll make our own with our band.”
Another reference to Jim Jarmusch’s love to music is his work on music videos for several musicians including Talking Heads, The Raconteurs and of course his friend Tom Waits. He even made a documentary about Neil Young and Crazy Horse, following them on their 1996 tour (“Year of the Horse”).
Jarmusch’s movies are populated by characters having a certain charm, unique but not unvaried nor dull. For him the protagonists are the most important component of his movies: “I always start with characters rather than with a plot, which many critics would say is very obvious from the lack of plot in my films - although I think they do have plots - but the plot is not of primary importance to me, the characters are.”
A great number of protagonists are best described as normal human beings (exceptions: “Ghost Dog” and “The Limits of Control”), with ordinary and mundane lives. Characters who seem to lack any sort of ambition, apathetic, without any real direction in life, but nevertheless happen to stumble into adventures. "Laconic, withdrawn, sorrowful mumblers" as novelist Paul Auster describes them, giving the protagonists of Bill Murray in “Broken Flowers”, Tom Waits in “Down by Law”, and Forest Whitaker in “Ghost Dog” as example.
Although they reflect ordinary persons, they all have their own individual and signature character. However not in the way James Bond or Rocky Balboa does, but in a manner which always reminds you of someone you know, or at least makes you believe you could met this person daily out on the street.
Still these usually lone and meditative personalities tend to be accompanied or surrounded by another kind of characters: lovable losers, oddballs and sometimes deadbeats or as critic Jennie Yabroff describes them: "three time losers, petty thieves and inept con men, [ .]”, all of them of course “eminently likeable, if not downright charming".
One could even say that there is no truly and absolutely evil protagonist in Jim Jarmusch’s work, except maybe Cole Wilson in “Dead Man” or Bill Murray as “American” in “The Limits of Control” if one has the heart to do so.
It is usually these live wires and loquacious persons dominating the dialogues and action.
Finally it is noticeable that many protagonists in Jarmusch’s films are immigrants or foreigners. Whether it is a Hungarian John Lurie and Eszter Bálint in “Stranger than Paradise” or an Italian Roberto Benigni in “Down by Law”, they all have an important meaning in Jim Jarmusch’s stories, which I am going to take a closer look at in the sub-item “Themes”.
Initially one can easily note that Jim Jarmusch makes movies about people. He films their lives, how they are inevitably interconnected, how their lives get impacted due to others’ all the time and how the relationships of the different characters unfold.
Moreover Jarmusch is interested in what goes on in the margins of our life. He documents the mundane events that most people take for granted, but for him the most fascinating things arise out of the simplest situations. "I consider myself a minor poet who writes fairly small poems. I'd rather make a movie about a guy walking his dog than about the emperor of China.", he once said.
However there's more to it than that. Jarmusch manages to combine the normal course of life with bizarrely striking situations and customary unconventional absurdity, which differentiates his movies from simple documentation.
Taking “Night on Earth” as example, one can clearly see the banality of the main story: a cab ride; several people wanting to get from one place to another. What would be limited in nearly every mainstream movie to getting in and getting out the cab, Jarmusch unfolds into unforgettable moments: "So in a way the content of this film is made up of things that would usually be taken out.
It's similar to what I like about “Stranger than Paradise” or “Down by Law”, the moments between what we think of as significant".
We can notice again Jim Jarmusch’s signature tone: The emphasis is not placed on the minimal plot but rather on the characters, the unique personalities and the unfolding relationships between driver and passenger.
Furthermore all sketches are garnished with his original and extraordinary absurdity mentioned above, such as a priest dying of a heart attack after hearing the driver’s confessions or a German driver, all overtaxed with the “New World”, especially the cab’s automatic transmission.
This subject matter of being a stranger in a strange land is another topic Jim Jarmusch frequently deals with. His interest may come from his European roots, both of his parents descending from Irish and German families, or maybe it has a complete different reason, as Tom Waits suggested: “The key, I think, to Jim, is that he went gray when he was 15 .
It is his notion of looking at the same thing in different ways, and to be more precisely quite often the foreign perspectives on America and the American way of life. Especially in his movies “Stranger than Paradise”, “Ghost Dog” and “Mystery Train” this topic is explored, and that is being made with a sense of “hip” cynicism.
The logical outcome of this is a presented mixture and interaction between different cultures and habits, like a wandering Native American quoting William Blake or an Afro-American hit-man strictly following the Japanese Hagakure (a practical and spiritual guide for a Samurai).
A slightly modified, but nevertheless frequently used topic is being a stranger at home or better, an outsider and lone wolf in his own society. What Tom Waits believes Jim Jarmusch has experienced himself is a main subject in several of his films, most notably in his first feature film “Permanent Vacation”. In this movie the permanent drifter Allie fully understands and confronts the harsh truth of his isolation and aloneness that most people deny.
He rejects traditional social values, like materialism, ambition and family, and chooses instead to live an honest existence.
Moreover the attitude of seeing things from another point of view is discussed in the very same picture: At the end of “Permanent Vacation”, Allie leaves New York for Paris, when he coincidentally meets a young French man, who has just arrived in New York from Paris. They represent opposing cultural "twins" (both are similar drifters) literally "changing places" and thus opening new worlds for the two of them.
Beginning with Allie´s solipsistic appearing attitude, one can notice Jim Jarmusch’s weakness for Existentialism, Constructivism and Eastern philosophy.
Apart from “Ghost Dog”, one could say that “The Limits of Control” is Jarmusch’s most “philosophical” movie so far. With lines like „Everything is subjective.”, “The universe has no center and no edges” and “Reality is arbitrary”, Jarmusch gives the viewer a constructivist guideline to understand his highly symbolic picture. Aside from that, the lone main character practices regular Tai Chi exercises and has an, on the whole, quite Zen-like air to him.
Influence, Impact & Legacy
Jim Jarmusch has many different sources, which he got and still gets influenced of: Film-Makers, Musicians, Writers, Philosophers… the range is long. Like many people, his idiosyncratic style of movie-making was mainly formed in the years of his childhood and his adolescence.
Jim Jarmusch was born to a middle-class family in a little Akron-suburb called Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio in 1953. As said before in the sub-item “Themes”, both sides of his family originally came from Europe (Irish/German on his mother's side, Czech/German on his father's).
This fact and the not little influence of his grandmother can be noticed in Jarmusch’s choice of topics: “My maternal grandmother was amazingly inspiring to me,'' Jarmusch said. ''On my 16th birthday, she gave me the translation of Proust. She had a lot of activities: she traded Oriental rugs, she knew gypsies and got me interested in Native American culture.”
With films such as Andy Warhol's “Chelsea Girls” and Robert Downey, Sr.'s “Putney Swope” he entered the underground scene, sparking the outlaw in Jim Jarmusch.
However it were not only movies that influenced him: "Like all kids, I loved movies, but literature was the most important thing to me then, and it played the biggest role in shaping any understanding or beliefs I have about mysticism and metaphysics." Starting with “Dante and Aristides, the English poets and the Romantic poets”2, he developed a taste for the Beat-counterculture, reading William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac.
This passion explained his studies in journalism, literature and art history, after he had graduate from high school in 1971, before even thinking about movie-making.
A one-year visit to Paris in 1975 should change his mind, as a journalist noticed: “This experience in Europe is described as formative in that it ultimately led to him becoming a filmmaker. In fact, in hindsight this experience can be regarded as crucial in two ways: it enabled an appreciation of cinema as a formal medium, and it placed Jarmusch outside his "home" culture.”
This first trip aboard was furthermore the beginning of Jim Jarmusch’s love for travel: “The oldest narrative in the world is the journey.”, he said, reflecting on the importance of travel in his films, and ads: “Being in a place where you don’t understand certain things is really inspiring for your imagination.”4 Taking a closer look, one will definitely notice that Jarmusch’s wanderlust has rubbed off on his work, since nearly every movie plays mostly “on the road” and is often a truly odyssey.
So when Jarmusch came back from Paris, he transferred to New York University, and spent four years mastering the basics of filmmaking, working as a teaching assistant to Nicholas Ray and as a production assistant on Wim Wenders' "Lightning over Water". Both of the famous film directors became a great inspiration and good friends for Jim Jarmusch.
In 1984 Jim Jarmusch’s first major film was finally released to the theaters. “Stranger than Paradise” should become "one of the most influential movies of the 1980s" and would be "an early example of the low-budget independent wave that would dominate the cinematic marketplace a decade later."5 The positive reception and the enormous attention it attracted accorded the director a certain iconic status within arthouse cinema.
In his next three movies “Down by Law”, “Mystery Train” and “Night on Earth”, he refined his style, gaining a small but dedicated following and cult status all over the world.
“Down by Law”
“Down by Law” begins with the characteristically long tracking shots through the deserted French Quarter of New Orleans, accompanied by Tom Waits’ bourbon-soaked blues. The kind of melancholic mood evoked hereby sets the atmosphere of the whole movie.
Jim Jarmusch continues the theme of two Americans and a foreigner wandering through an American landscape, which was begun in “Stranger than Paradise”. He tells the story of three men, who are placed in the same cell. Two of them, the unemployed, shabby DJ Zack and the wannabe-pimp Jack, were framed and thus arrested. Both cannot stand each other and therefore avoid any talk between them.
Zack, played by Tom Waits, with his glib chatter and monologues is as much a lovable loser as Jack (John Lurie) is, though, or rather due to his grumpy and aggressive temperament. This all makes them to typical Jim-Jarmusch- characters.
This is shown by the fact that it is Bob who finds a way to escape, among other things. Before long the three men are on the run through the Louisianan swamps surrounding the prison.
Hopelessly lost and with the recurrent hatred between Jack and Zack almost causing the party to split up, they are brought together by Bob's ability to provide food.
Finally they come across a former restaurant and now residence of an Italian woman named Nicoletta. Bob instantly falls in love with her, and they decide to stay in the forest together.
After saying goodbye to the happy couple, Zack and Jack go their separate ways - an unspoken, reluctant friendship hanging between them as they part.
One can easily notice that “Down by Law” is a typical Jarmusch movie: the idiosyncratic characters, Robby Müller's slow-moving camerawork, the use of black and white film stock, the intellectual references (especially Bob’s quotation of Walt Whitman and Robert Frost), John Lurie’s and Tom Waits’ specific score, and the sort of deadpan humor, which is described by the Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert as follows: “On the surface, it's grim and relentless, but there's a thread of humor running through everything […].
It is noticeable that the film floats across various genres and styles (film noir, slapstick comedy, prison-escape, gangster, road journey) without settling into any one of them. Film critic Luc Sante describes Jarmusch as a chemist who enjoys assembling diverse ingredients in a flask and seeing how they will interact, not least because the director frequently takes some of these styles, cuts off the characteristics and makes them individual.
Taking prison-escape movies as example; there is indeed a prison stay and a break as well, but how they really manage to escape is never shown, and this is the essential part for such films. To cite Jim Jarmusch once again: "In a way the content of this film is made up of things that would usually be taken out. It's […] what I like about […} Down by Law, the moments between what we think of as significant" Instead of showing the protagonists interaction with other inmates on the yard, their way of escaping, or Bob chasing the rabbit, he is interested in the unfolding relationship between the three men and their conversations.
It is also noticeable that the last shot of the movie (Zack and Jack coming to a fork, each taking a different road), is practically given away by Bob’s, aforementioned, quotation of Robert Frost’s poem "The Road Not Taken": “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference.”
In addition one may interpret the "one less travelled by" as the alternative, foreign perspective that haunts Jarmusch's cinema (and his own career path). Unlike the path travelled by Zack and Jack, Bob's choice is the one that "has made all the difference"; most evident in the fact that he finds his fairytale book ending.
In conclusion it is to say that soon after its release in 1984, “Down by Law” became, like so many other Jarmusch films, an immediate cult hit mostly because of its idiosyncratic humor style but also because it starred musicians Tom Waits and John Lurie alongside upstart Italian comedian Roberto Benigni, playing the character Bob.
“The Limits of Control”
“The Limits of Control” is Jim Jarmusch’s latest movie, released to the cinemas in May, 2009.
The film opens in an airport in which Isaach De Bankolé's character, probably a hit man yet simply named Lone Man, is being instructed on his mission, although the mission itself is left unstated and the instructions are cryptic.
After the introduction in the airport he travels to various places in Spain, meeting several people in cafes and on trains along the way.
These people tell him a few mysterious and profound sentences with certain topics, and then the two of them exchange matchboxes. He finds a code written on a small piece of paper inside each matchbox, which he reads and simply eats afterwards. The meetings and the code he reads lead him to his next rendezvous, till he finally gets to a small town in the desert.
Just outside this town lies a heavily guarded mansion, and one slowly realizes that the target of his mission has to be in there. After observing the mansion for a while, he somehow (it is never shown) manage to get inside and to meet his opponent, who is played by Bill Murray. They have a short, cryptic conversation, until Isaach De Bankolé's character kills the man.
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