THE STORY OF A KILLER NOT QUITE LIKE THE REST : "GHOST DOG - THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI"

GHOST DOG For the longest time, this film had the title of “only Jim Jarmush film I haven’t watched”. Then my flat mate – who also works in / with films – watched it. It instantly rocketed to his list of favorite films ever – and it was somewhere near the top as well. Ironically enough this happened when I told him that he should watch something by Jim Jarmush – because he is pretty much my favorite director ever – and he went to the library only to find this was the only one on the shelf at that time. It took him months of recommending it – and me being very disorganized – but I finally got round to the blessed thing last night. Please note that I was nursing the remains of a rather brutal hangover at the time, and yet, I loved it. I mean, I feel that, just because of the hangover, I should watch it again, just to make sure I don’t miss something, but I doubt it. Minimal and beautiful as ever, this is Jim Jarmusch at his best, yet again. Ghost Dog (Forrest Whitaker) is a professional killer. He is not, however, like any professional killer you will have seen before. For starters he is pretty much the best at his job. He can dissolve into the night like a real ghost, getting “the job” done quickly and quietly. He is just a bit eccentric however. First of all, he only communicates by carrier pigeon. He lives, in fact, on a roof with a flock of pigeons. He lives by the code of the samurai. Guided by an ancient samurai text, he is the last unlikely member of a very ancient clan. Hired killers have, as you can imagine, rather unsavory bosses sometimes. Ghost Dog is no exception. One of these bosses is a mafia family. A mafia family that doesn’t quite realize what a sensitive balance Ghost Dog’s world is in. And when, one fateful night the balance is broken, everyone even vaguely connected knows the full wrath of the code of the samurai. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this is, in fact, a samurai film set in modern (relatively) day USA. And the particular genius of this film is largely the fact that it takes many very unlikely looking couplings that actually go together so well that you don’t even stop to think how unlikely they are until later sometimes. I mean, Forrest Whitaker makes a very unlikely samurai if you stop to think about it. Yet the story goes so smoothly and Whitaker carries off the role so well that it you actually don’t stop to think about it. Or even if you do a bit at the beginning of the film you are carried away by the beauty of the film. And the film is beautiful. I call this film pure Jarmusch because someone else could take the same story and make a very gangsterish “bad boy” revenge movie of it. No. this movie, although there is one heck of a lot of bloodshed in it, is calm, beautiful in places and sprinkled liberally with Jarmush’s rather unique sense of humor, eerie parallels and wonderful cinematography. I mean, if you don’t like Jarmusch’s style you’ll probably hate it, don’t get me wrong… If you like it however… Oh you are in for a treat…

A ROAD TRIP THROUGH TIME AND SPACE : "BROKEN FLOWERS"

You may have figured out at this point that I have a major soft spot, not to say a lot of respect, for Jim Jarmusch. I think he has a particular talent for capturing the small yet important things in life and putting them onto the screen, making films that truly resonate with the important things, the things that really matter in our lives. That’s what I find anyway. I mean, his minimalist style isn’t easy on everyone’s eyes, but I honestly feel that it wouldn’t hurt to familiarize oneself with it, even if it did jar at first. There are massive emotional depths out there you’re missing out on.
But anyway, back to one of the masters’ latest works. Don Johnston (Bill Murray) is what you might call an aging Don Juan. He has done very well for himself from the IT business, lives in a luxury house with his beautiful girlfriend and yet he is at a crisis point in his life. As Don cannot seem to quite let go of his Don Juan-ish instincts and give Sherry, his girlfriend, the attention she deserves, she has walked out on him. Not only that, but days later a mysterious and anonymous letter claiming to be from one of his old flames arrives, telling him that he has a 19 year-old son who he never knew about, that his son is on a road trip and possibly looking for him and that although she is not willing to say who she is, she thought it only fair to let him know. Don is devastated, not least because he has no interest whatsoever in finding long-lost progeny, but then intrigued. With the help of his over-enthusiastic neighbor, he makes a list of all the possible candidates gathers as much info about them as possible and sets off… Thus begins a very bizarre trip down memory lane…
Anyone even remotely interested with the works of Jim Jarmusch will know well that he is quite the master of the road movie. But his brilliance comes from the fact that he can take the road movie as a genre and do something different with it every time. I mean, Permanent Vacation is a road- movie of sorts – all we do is follow Ally drifting around town. In Mystery Train and Night On Earth travel is the main theme, Down By Law and Stranger than Paradise are road movies albeit unconventional ones. It is true that the road movie genre is open to a lot of different experiments and conventions as we can see from this week’s humble update alone, but I think Jarmusch’s brilliance lies in the fact that he can go over and over the same genre and do something different with it every time. Broken Flowers is a unconventional film, a road movie and a “coming of age” film all into one. Graying Don Juan Don Johnston looks back on his past, his mistakes and more importantly where his former lovers (and the cast alone here is quite impressive; Sharon Stone, Tilda Swindon and Jessica Lange to name but a few) are in their lives, and the differences between his life and theirs… The film is funny, touching and thought-provoking all at once. In short, as always with Mr. Jarmusch, a success.

POSSIBLY MY FAVORITE FILM EVER : "PERMANANT VACATION"

The thing about the art of Jim Jarmusch, is that it often speaks more of things that are felt as opposed to “known”. And if you’re not quite sure what that means (and believe me I wouldn’t blame you), I strongly recommend you watch Permanent Vacation. If you do, you will find yourself in the rather strange situation I find myself in right now. The film is 72 minutes long, and if you are like me in your taste of film, you will have watched it “in one gulp” as it were; yet if anyone asks you what it was about, you will be unable to answer exactly. It is about a feeling, a state of being… A state of constant drifting, being unable to belong, being on permanent vacation…
The “owner” of these feelings is Allie Parker. He is a young man of about 18, and before you get the wrong impression, he is not sad because he is this way. This is just the way he is. He is very “cool” about the whole thing and very much embodies the detached and disillusioned generation that accompanied the yuppies who were on the “up and up” in 1980, when the film was made… Allie reckons some people can kid themselves, hide their loneliness with work, ambition, various other things, but really we all drift, and we are all alone… This is not a particularly sad state of affairs, not for Allie anyway; there are many good things in life as well, like music for instance and interesting people… But this is the way it is, like it or lump it… If that looks sad to you from where you’re standing, well… That’s your problem… Not Allie’s…
During the film, we just follow Allie around as he roams the streets of his hometown. The drift is about to take him again, he can feel it coming, but before he succumbs to it (and he always does), he wants to visit his old home. He wants to see his mother. He wants to walk around town for a while. So we wander around with him, with him, we connect with all the people he meets, from his girlfriend who is very much disillusioned with him to his mother and her roommate in a lunatic asylum, to random crazy people off the street. Allie connects with all of them with the same ease, openness and detachment – as far as he is concerned, we are all a little mad anyway…
It’s hard to believe this was Jarmusch’s first feature film. Originally, it was a short film that he shot as a graduation project; he then built on it and lengthened it. In it, apart from a philosophy that is actually a lot deeper than it pretends to be, you will find fascinating camerawork and a very classy minimalist esthetic. I have read it said of Yazujiro Ozu, the great Japanese minimalist director, that one could stop any of his films at a random place and they still would actually qualify as a work of art; I don’t know if this is exactly true of Jarmusch, but it comes pretty damn close… I would go as far as saying it was worth watching for that alone… But don’t be disheartened by the subject matter and definitely don’t imagine this is a sad film… Thought provoking yes. But not sad; as Allie says, this is life and really there isn’t all that much to explain – there isn’t that much you can explain… You have to live it and feel for yourself…

"DOWN BY LAW" AND HOW TO GET BACK UP AGAIN...

Now, having met Allie and got to know his philosophy slightly better, we jump forward a few years and see what he may become when he grows up. And as if to break the mood of deep philosophy of the previous film, we see quite clearly that the result needn’t be tragic or very thought provoking… Down by law is qualified as one of the “coolest comedies” ever, with an even cooler cast – and if you ever thought that there could be no such thing as a truly funny minimalist comedy, well, prepared to be proved wrong.
Zack (played by legendary musician Tom Waits) is a DJ. He is basically very much like Allie Parker from Permanent Vacation all grown up. The only trouble is that he is lacking slightly in Allie’s maturity and his girlfriend has had enough of his attitude and kicked him out of their flat. Jack (John Lurie) is a pimp. But again, he has no great ambition and drifts through life, things seem to be going well, he’s cool, he’s hip… Various hitches and “setbacks” later, these two misfits will end up as cellmates in jail. At first, their great similarity means that they rub each other the wrong way, but this soon transforms into something akin to “brotherhood”; while goading each other and bickering nearly constantly, they are deep down good friends. Things change dramatically when they are joined by a third cellmate: Roberto (Roberto Begnini). Roberto can only speak very broken English, phrases of which he religiously writes down in his “phrasebook”. Unlike his cellmates, he is anything but “cool”, he talks constantly and can be best likened to a well-meaning Labrador. But just as his cellmates are trying to decide whether to like him or loathe him, something unexpected happens: a chance for escape presents itself and our three cellmates grab at it… The question is, will they be able to put their various differences to one side and escape in one piece?
It’s part of Jarmusch’s originality that after setting out a certain thing, a certain outlook on life in a quite sober way in one film, he can turn around and use it as a mainstay of comedy in another film… Although I must admit I somehow suspect that later on in life Jarmusch decided that the comedy side of the “cool” attitude to life was more important than its philosophy because in quite a few films I have seen he puts a “cool” character and a “totally uncool” one side by side – or portray a character trying to be cool but actually not really managing… As you can imagine, this a typical “clash of characters” film, with Roberto Begnini providing the comic contretemps to the ultra-cool Zack and Jack. It is rather telling that, ok warning, a small spoiler, that at the end of the film Roberto is the one who is “successful” as in he is the one who actually manages something concrete, Jack and Zack however will, shall we say, continue to drift to unsure futures in pretty much the same way they were at the beginning of the film…
In all the Jarmusch films I have watched, one thing that always strikes me greatly is the attention to detail. Since this is a minimalist film with minimum points distracting from the main story, the small details naturally gain great importance and one can sit back and savor a cleverly planted gesture or expression from one of the actors or a prop of some description, cleverly inserted into the foray… And again – I cannot say this often enough – something should be said about Jarmusch’s cinematography, this time even more striking in black and white…

FOR A LARGE, HAPPY SLICE OF LIFE, STEP ON BOARD THE "MYSTERY TRAIN"

If you had nothing but the DVD edition of this film that I own, and more specifically the blurb on the back to go on when researching this particular film, you might be a tad confused. The DVD cover explains that the film successfully combines a Japanese ghost story, an Italian romantic-comedy, a Brit that causes utter confusion and trouble (nothing new there then!) and Elvis Presly. And although this is, admittedly, a mighty confusing concoction, it is a very neat summary of what goes on in this film. See, this is the beauty of films like this. Life, real life, actually does successfully combine elements like this. It’s just that we are often so lost in our own strand of the story that we see nothing but what surrounds us personally and not the big picture. Mystery Train is not only one of the single funniest films I have ever had the pleasure of watching, it is also a rather stunning “slice of life” with a slightly deeper message hidden down below…
Our story takes place in Memphis, Tennessee. A young Japanese couple disembarks from a train; they are here to sightsee; the young man’s hair and dexterity with his Zippo lighter alone tells us what great fans they are of a certain lost age. Sun studios, Graceland and the excitement of actually being there engulfs them both; our young hero however is, as was anyone worth knowing back in The King’s day, ultra-cool. His girlfriend, like a lot of women I know, accuses him of being cold and unfeeling. After a day’s sightseeing they settle into a small hotel in the town center for the night before continuing. At just about the same moment, a young woman from Italy (Nicoletta Brasci) who is accompanying the body of a loved one back to Italy has found out, much to her distress, that she has to stay in Memphis overnight. She finds a small hotel in the center of town, where a young woman is in the middle of a fight with the hotel’s night clerk who only has double rooms left and refuses to have her stay in one at half price. The young Italian will agree to be her roommate and will then have to listen to endless stories about her English boyfriend, nicknamed Elvis, how they broke up and how she’s leaving him and leaving town… Before she has a strange brush with a ghost that is… Lastly, again at the same time Elvis (not the singer, the afore mentioned British boyfriend played by the ultra-mega charismatic lead singer of The Clash, Joe Strummer) is in a bar, getting very drunk and waving a gun around. It will be up to his colleague Will Robinson (played by Rick Aviles, who is not best-known for lead parts but who you will have seen in smaller parts in classics such as Carlito’s Way, The Godfather III and Ghost) and his “brother in law” Charlie (played by Steve Buscemi, another “staple” of Jarmusch’s – not that I am complaining) to calm him down and get him out of trouble… Well, that’s the plan, anyway. The night is preparing for many strange stories and adventures, and they will come together in the strangest, most unexpected way…
The first thing I noticed about this film is that the location was, in fact, the same as Down By Law. You may think that this would take away from the feel of the film but in fact it does not. Because the whole point of the film is a sort of permanence of locations. We wander round and around the streets of Memphis, crossing the same streets and sometimes even copying the same shots as a couple of minutes ago while the story changes and advances… This in, itself, is a rather beautiful thing: I sometimes stop to wonder at how many people in total must have walked on the same streets as I have… Mind-boggling thought, no? This is also the ultimate “strands of life” film, because the three stories do come together in the end, but ironically, neither of them are aware of it… Another funny little quirk of living on this planet; for all you know, the stranger next to you might be a potential best friend or the love of your life, you may actually never know…
Jarmusch makes no bones about the fact that this film is about music. Good music, from back in the day… The soundtrack will have the toes of viewers of a certain generation tapping, think Elvis, Roy Orbison, Charlie Parker… Yeah, you know what I am talking about… And lastly, but by no means on earth least, I must give a standing ovation to one of the best comic duos I have ever seen. See, Joe Strummer is not the only musician on board. The night clerk at the hotel (where, you will doubtless have guessed, all three “stories” end up) is played by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins (best known for his classic tune “I put a spell on you”) and the bellhop assisting him is played by Cinqué Lee. Apart from the obvious practical part they play in advancing the story, their various interactions and conversations are inserted into various places in the story (like small side dishes between main courses if you will) and constitute some of the categorically funniest dialogues I have witnessed in my 28 years on earth. I promise you, remembering them alone still has me giggling. They are so funny that sometimes we see the same dialogue twice (remember that all three stories are occurring at once, so sometimes as the information we gain about the “background” puts a whole new slant on a dialogue we thought was something completely different) but that doesn’t matter, it’s STILL funny…
In short, another touching and sensitive slice of life from Jarmusch; yes there is a lot to think deeply about, but at the same time there are plenty of instances to laugh, just like life itself… Watch this one if you watch none of the others… Mind you, I have a feeling you will be converted after watching this one anyway… =)

JUST ANOTHER "NIGHT ON EARTH"

Great minimalist director Jim Jarmusch once asked, I have read, why, if life hasn’t got “themes” and “storylines” films should be obliged to have them. This statement could well be the recipe for disaster in the hands of a novice or someone who wasn’t quite sure of what they were doing. In the hands of Jarmusch, however, it becomes the starting point for some of the most original and beautiful works of art in cinematic history. Now, a lot of you probably know that Jim Jarmush is a minimalist. And as such, not all his works are exactly easy to watch. Night on Earth however, is a comedy. It is, in actual fact, a sensitively filmed series of short stories that come together to make a story of a short space of time cut out of one night on planet earth… Doesn’t that actually sound a bit like what life is to you? It sure does to me…
When starting filming, Jarmusch makes his point of inspiration particularly clear; on the wall there are five clocks. You know the types; they usually have them in massive multi-national corporations and show the times in all the big capitals and important cities in the world. Here we have Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome and Helsinki. It is seven p.m. in L.A., ten p.m. in New York, 4 a.m. in Paris, 4 a.m. again in Rome and 5 a.m. in Helsinki. Just at this same moment, five taxi drivers are driving along in five cities. Corky, a sassy young lady cab-driver in L.A. has just picked up a big Hollywood casting agent from the airport; Helmut, a migrant from Eastern Germany to New York whose driving skills have a lot to be desired, has picked up his first customer ever, Yo-yo, who wants to go to Brooklyn; in Paris, a young cab-driver from the Ivory Coast has just about had enough of the two arrogant and drunk dignitaries in the back of his cab, in Rome a hyperactive and slightly quirky cab driver is heading off to pick up a priest from one of the city squares and in Helsinki gruff looking driver Mika has just picked up three rather drunken friends and is wondering how to get them home and, more to the point, where he should take them. What follows is funny, touching, surreal or maybe just plain weird. But it is all simply part of a night on earth…
I spoke about Turkish minimalist director Nuri Bilge Ceylan a few weeks back; this is a totally different take on the genre. Or “type of film” as it were. There are no prolonged silences (and some of Jarmusch’s films contain those by the cart-load, but not this one) and general air of sadness. Jarmusch has somehow given what is, to me anyway, the essence of the night in a big city. It is in those small hours when all the good folks are in bed, the weird, the bad and the slightly mad become more and more conspicuous. There are no distractions; we can concentrate on their stories. And this is what these films are largely about: concentrating on one thing. Of course this is a large risk as the stories take place only in the cabs, in some of the cases there is dialogue, but in a few cases one or another of the characters carries the entire weight of the segment in a monologue. This is why, no doubt, Jarmush opted for actors such as Winona Rider, Roberto Begnini (one of his staple cast – I am not a massive fan of Begnini but here, the part fits him like a glove. He is actually one of the actors who has a monologue and not a dialogue so his task is tough, but credit where it is due, I cannot imagine anyone doing a better job of it), Isaach de Bankolé and Beatrice Dalle among others… This is for those of you who want something simple and beautiful. True, the stories don’t “come together” as it were in a magnificent climax but they peacefully co-exist and are definitely part of a whole… Like life. Real life.