Weekly Report from the N.T.A.B. Division of Media Review
Jim Jarmusch
The weekly reports for the month of October will be brief. The entire division, at the behest of the front office, is currently moving all of the old Finn’s Top 5 Horror Movie lists over to the Bunker Vault, where they will all be double-checked for accuracy and reworked, as needed.
If we can be frank for a minute here: we do not need this. It’s extra work. It’s busy work. It feels very punitive in nature. The memo wherein this directive was handed down was positively dripping with sarcasm and condescension.
We’ll be updating the main blog space with these new and improved Top 5 lists, most likely in clumps and batches. We thank you in advance for your consideration as we work through about sixty thousand words’ worth of documents.
NTAB Directorial Culture Exchange Update: Jim Jarmusch
This is one of my favorite “indy” or “art house” directors, and I have wonder if that even applies anymore in the Streaming Age? When you get to put your all-star cast of friends in your zombie movie—because so many people want to work with you—and you can make a guest appearance on What We Do In The Shadows, I think you’re officially out of the Indy trenches.
Nevertheless, for years Jim Jarmusch was one of those directors what was noted for his thoughtful storytelling, his love of actors, and a personal, quirky kind of vision that produced a wide variety of movies that skate along the edge of genre and manage to celebrate it without irony. I am positive that there’s a large chunk of the hipster population that had never seen a samurai movie before they watched Forrest Whittaker in Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai (1999).
Dead Man (1995)
Johnny Depp was in the midst of doing a lot of small and/or independent films, working with lots of noteworthy directors (like Tim Burton on Ed Wood) when he was cast to play William Blake (no relation), fresh off the train from Ohio, in the frontier mining town of Machine, on the promise of a job as the accountant for The Mining Company. When that does not pan out, he’s cast out into the world without any money or prospects. When he not-so-accidentally kills the sun of the owner of the mining company (who critically wounds him first), he flees into the wilderness...and this begins Blake’s long, strange trip into the underworld as a dead man.
This movie is crammed to the gills with all-star talent, boasts a soundtrack written and performed by Neil Young (spoiler: it’s good, not great), and was shot entirely in black and white—to further underscore the themes of life and death. There’s a grim humor present in the film; not guffaws, but rather rueful chuckles, as Blake meets a Native American named Nobody who befriends and advises him, acting as a guide through increasingly bizarre landscapes.
It's been called an “anti-western” but I don’t think that’s quite right. Jarmusch is doing his own thing, to be sure—conversations abound, stories told, characters indelibly etched into the film, but he’s also toying with the myth of the gunfighter and Richard Slotkin’s myth of the Frontier and themes of regeneration through violence. Blake finds a kind of purpose in being labled a killer, and by the end of the film, has become death itself. This movie and the one below fight for supremacy as my favorite Jarmusch movies.
Mystery Train (1989)
This was the first Jarmusch movie I saw, and my pick since Janice chose Dead Man. Jarmusch loves vignettes and short stories in his movies, and in Mystery Train, he weaves three very different tales together in the span of a single night in Memphis, Tenn and the proximity to a run-down hotel: A young Japanese couple on vacation, on a pilgrimage to not only see America but to see Graceland, Sun Studios, and other Elvis-related sites; Two friends are looking after their drunk and unpredictable buddy after he loses his job and gets kicked out of his own house by his girlfriend; and an Italian woman with a layover, flying her husband’s body back home, forced to spend the night in Memphis.
Jarmusch clearly loves vignettes and he’s one of the few people who can pull them off and make them work (see also: Coffee and Cigarettes 2004). There are a lot of tracking shots used in all three vignettes that establish place and also time. It might not seem like they go anywhere, but they are mesmerizing to watch. Jarmusch gets away with a lot that a lesser director would get excoriated for. He’s also really good at getting musicians to act.
Watching these three stories quietly unfold, and then ultimately stitch together, is a lot like reading three satisfying short stories in a row, which is exactly what you were supposed to take away from the movie. Another round of near-stunt casting with the likes of The Clash’s Joe Strummer, Steve Buscemi, and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, for crying out loud, makes Mystery Train a real pleasure to watch and re-watch. It’s a must-do for Elvis fans...or Caaaaarl Perkin.
The first movie I think of when I hear Jarmusch is Only Lovers Left Alive. When I first saw that movie, even as a massive Tom Hiddleston fan, I HATED it. I mean, I wrote a page long rant to a friend going on and on about how much I hated it. But it stayed in my head. Over the next couple of days, I would remember scenes that. . .maybe weren't all that bad. About a week later, I watched it again and fell in love with it. I think it was just that it was not at all what I was expecting it to be. Once I got past that, it became one of my favorite movies. I don't even know how many times I've watched it since. I really should check out some of his other work.