A weekend with Jim Jarmusch

Collective Chaos screened three movies of the much acclaimed director Jim Jarmusch this weekend – Stranger than Paradise, Down by Law and Broken Flowers. While missed the Friday screening of the much acclaimed Stranger than Paradise (which I hope I will catch some other time), I did manage to catch the other two despite losing my membership card. I must thank the CC guys for letting me in without really any proof of membership. I had on earlier occasions seen two of his other films (Coffee and Cigarettes and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai) so it was great that CC showed these three.

Jarmusch’s movies to me have always seemed to me like snippets of a journey; starting at a station and end on another: none of them is either the start or the end for the they are fixed at birth and death of the individuals. It is when the paths of more than one such traveller entwines that we have something akin to a plot. The plot and the setting therefore is not something which shapes the characters but it is other way around. If even one of the participating characters were different it would probably lead to different plot. Jarmusch is a master of setting situations and bringing in the main players (often characters from the edge of the society) together as a result of which all his movies have an air of inevitability around them. And then there is a comic vein running through the body of all his works; sometimes ironic and satirical but mostly plain humour, when you laugh because somebody just touched that cord somewhere. Both Down by Law and Broken Flowers, though separated by a couple of decades bring out these aspects.

The first can alternatively seen as humanist comedy or an harsh indictment of the justice system. Apurva’s post on this says almost everything there is to be said about the second issue. However I do not believe that Jarmusch wanted to deliver a strong message here. What transpired in the courts, what course the law took or what crimes any of the main characters are charged with are not known to the audience. The prison in my opinion is merely a device (why he chose such a device is another discussion) to bring the characters together; it is the station where the story starts unfolding. The characters in the beginning are shown to be somewhat self-centered; Zack (Tom Waits) and Jack (John Lurie) not listening to their girlfriends and each other and Roberto; and Roberto (Roberto Benigni) not really wanting to understand what an English word really means or if anyone is really interested in what he is talking about. The prison cell mirrors their close minds about themselves and others. The turning point in the movie was when Roberto draws a window on the cell wall, showing an willingness to explore and to see out. Soon they escape and on their first stop – a bunk in the swamp – is a replica of their cell but with a real window indicating that the tranformation has started. By the end the only character with any sort of a proper denouement seems to be Roberto who has decided to settle down in the wilderness with Nicoletta; but others too have reached their ending stations for the last scene shows them taking a decision amicably the only time in the movie. Their journey has not ended but a milestone has been reached.

Broken Flowers reminded me greatly of Sophia Coppolla’s excellent Lost in Translation; not as much in its theme but in how the entire script is written to fit Bill Murray’s personality; and Murray does deliver a stellar performance as the newly rich ex-computer-geek with with slew of girlfriends who have deserted him. The film’s trailer starts with the journey of a letter from the drop box to the delivery address and the film’s story starts with the Sherry (Julie Delpy), leaving Don (Bill Murray). A just arrived letter in a pink envelope seems to be the last straw for her, and yet for Don is the start of a new journey of self-realisation; for the letter informs him of his son with a long forgotten lover. As Don visits his previous flames one by one, it dawns slowly on him that he is not really made a mark on anyone’s life; each of his exes have continued their lives without him and slowly discarded him. This dawning realization furthers the feeling that somewhere there is someone who could never forget him for he is his father and increases the ache of meeting him. This pushes him further in his journey ultimately ending unsuccessfully in a graveyard in front of the grave of now dead ex-lover. The success of this journey is open to interpretation. The ending shows Murray standing alone looking ahead into a road into which a roadie he mistook for his son has just disappeared and he seems all alone in the world; but there is still hope for Sherry has written saying she still loves him. The letter itself is merely a device (just like the prison cell in Down by Law) – the audience can neither deny nor affirm its authencity till the very end. That Don says to the roadie, “Well, the past is gone, I know that. The future isn’t here yet, whatever it’s going to be. So, all there is, is this. The present. That’s it.“, made me think that his journey was worthwhile.

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