Vamoose, Jarmusch!
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The Limits of Control
Running time 116 minutes
Written and DIRECTED BY Jim Jarmusch
Starring Isaach De Bankolé, Tilda Swinton, John Hurt
As bad movies go, a nightmare called The Limits of Control can’t go fast enough to suit me. This is an empty, boring sedative by Jim Jarmusch, a writer-director with not enough talent to be either. He’s been getting away with murder for years, serving scraps of gibberish like Ghost Dog, Dead Man and Mystery Train that nobody except the fools who finance them actually sees.
A mysterious black man with a briefcase (Isaach De Bankolé) glides across the Spanish landscape without a compass in a dead narrative that resembles a canoe without a paddle. To demonstrate the kind of deadly, narcoleptic pacing Mr. Jarmusch enjoys, the man travels from the airport to his hotel. You see all the blurry scenery along the way through the windows of the car. Upon arrival, you see his finger press the elevator button. You watch him stroll catatonically down the corridor, insert his key in the door of the room. Then you endure the rain falling on the street below, like a wartime torture inflicted by an enemy nation that ignores the rules of the Geneva Convention. A man carrying a violin gives him a matchbox containing a secret note, which he swallows with an espresso.
Tilda Swinton appears in a cafe sipping another espresso, wearing a white wig and white cowboy hat, babbling incoherently about bad films like The Lady From Shanghai, which obviously shaped Mr. Jarmusch’s cinematic sensibility. The mystery man remains mute. She confesses it was a “film that makes no sense.” Like this one. He eats another note. On a train, he meets a Japanese woman who says each one of us is a set of molecules, spinning in ecstasy. In another town, in another cafe, a ragged bum (John Hurt) arrives with another matchbox, carrying a violin. Each matchbox contains another secret note, which the man chews and washes down with yet another espresso. In a hotel, a gun-wielding woman played by Paz De La Huerta strips naked and climbs into the man’s bed. He remains silent, fully clothed and staring at the ceiling, registering no emotion even when the woman aims the gun at his head. At this point, I understood his catatonia completely. I was catatonic myself. But there are more trains, more cafes, more notes, more espresso. Droves of people were walking out, but duty demanded that I stick around and find out what was going on, what was in the notes, and if the man had a missing tongue.
O.K., I’ll bite. Is it surrealism? Existentialism? An avant-garde throwback to the experimental films of Stan Brakhage? How about plain old pretentiousness? The Limits of Control stinks of it. Filled with asinine observations like “Reality is arbitrary, everything is imagined, there is no such thing as reality” and “A reflection is more interesting than the thing that is being reflected,” it’s a non-film filled with a bland, blank-faced emptiness that desperately needs to be parsed with some flash and vigor. Not to mention insight. At no time are we given the faintest glimpse of what anyone is up to. By the time Bill Murray shows up to deliver less than a dozen lines and get shot to death, we don’t even know why. We are, however, grateful he doesn’t drink espresso.
Pure, undiluted crap, this is the worst movie since Synecdoche, New York.
rreed@observer.com
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Bad review
I'm sorry to have to put it like this, but just as one may dislike a movie, one may also dislike a movie review, I guess. I don't mean to offend, but this is one of the most ridiculous I have ever read. The first paragraph declares it as some sort of tirade against Jarmusch, whatever he might have done to offend this reviewer. This was the first Jarmusch film I saw, but I know that the "scraps of gibberish" mentioned here are widely recognised as excellent movies, and that Jarmusch himself enjoys a rather high esteem as a director. The rest of the review just goes on to prove the point that this reviewer never even gave the movie a chance, probably expecting "Mission Impossible 4" and completely shutting it out when it became clear that it wasn't.
I'll bite, too. No surrealism, no avant-garde, not pretentious. Maybe some existentialism, and slightly experimental. It is a slow-paced movie that wraps up 100 years of Hollywood movies. It plays with the audiences expectations, it relishes in clichés, it keeps surprising by doing everything a bit differently than what years of watching pre-cooked Hollywood thrillers make us expect - without looking down on them, mind you, but being a tribute to and reflection upon them at the same time. The film is slow, yes, but it is not boring, as everyone will see who keeps an open eye to see all the little, carefully placed details, and an open mind to pick up the thoughts raised by it. And I'm not relating to the obtrusively placed political messages. It's style might not be what we're used to, but it is not at all a posh offering that just tries to be different. It is of the classic Hollywood era movie quality, owing to grand masters such as Hitchcock (Rear Window particularly comes to mind in relation to this movie), the kind of minimal but effective storytelling that many seem to have forgotten about today. It makes me a little sad to see that obviously, a thriller without blood or a gunfight is not even given a chance anymore.
I don't want to pretend that the plot is terribly thick or ingenious, because it isn't. But it is enjoyable enough, even though I also admit that omitting 1 or 2 repetitions, cutting maybe 15 or 20 minutes from the film, might have done it some good (even though I personally wouldn't mind it being an hour longer). But even if you don't care for the plot at all, there's so many things to love. Not least of which the style, its sense of danger and deception more real than if everything was just spelled out, its mysterious and confident main character cooler than any of Tarantino's fast-talking wise guys. All of this of course supported by, and this is the only thing everyone seems to agree upon, cinematography at its best, each scene carefully executed and orchestrated to the point of perfection, so that each frame is like a picture in itself. A minimal electronic soundtrack to support the atmosphere and only few, but mostly poignant lines of dialogue. It all results in scenes as memorable as many of Hollywood's great classics. In fact, I think that one day this film might indeed be called a classic itself, or at least a cult classic. Movies that are disliked by critics but loved by audiences are no rarity, and I believe this one qualifies.
The characteristic of a good, professional review is that even if you completely disagree with its verdict, you can agree with its reasons. This is nowhere near the case for the original review above, which does not even try to give any explanations, or evoke the feeling that the critic gave the movie a chance. And again, I do not mean to offend the reviewer personally. In fact, I'm sure upon re-reading his article he would agree with my point. I hope that I was at least able to give another point of view and make clear that despite this critic's negative review, if you are a true old-school film buff, there is a chance that you will like, even love this movie. It has been many years since I enjoyed one so much, and I can't wait to see it again, as it felt like one that I would appreciate even more the second or third time around. There are also some excellent reviews and analyses in the User Comments section at IMDb; recommended reading, but best enjoyed after having seen the film.
Bad review
I'm sorry to have to put it like this, but just as one may dislike a movie, one may also dislike a movie review, I guess. I don't mean to offend, but this is one of the most ridiculous I have ever read. The first paragraph declares it as some sort of tirade against Jarmusch, whatever he might have done to offend this reviewer. This was the first Jarmusch film I saw, but I know that the "scraps of gibberish" mentioned here are widely recognised as excellent movies, and that Jarmusch himself enjoys a rather high esteem as a director. The rest of the review just goes on to prove the point that this reviewer never even gave the movie a chance, probably expecting "Mission Impossible 4" and completely shutting it out when it became clear that it wasn't.
I'll bite, too. No surrealism, no avant-garde, not pretentious. Maybe some existentialism, and slightly experimental. It is a slow-paced movie that wraps up 100 years of Hollywood movies. It plays with the audiences expectations, it relishes in clichés, it keeps surprising by doing everything a bit differently than what years of watching pre-cooked Hollywood thrillers make us expect - without looking down on them, mind you, but being a tribute to and reflection upon them at the same time. The film is slow, yes, but it is not boring, as everyone will see who keeps an open eye to see all the little, carefully placed details, and an open mind to pick up the thoughts raised by it. And I'm not relating to the obtrusively placed political messages. It's style might not be what we're used to, but it is not at all a posh offering that just tries to be different. It is of the classic Hollywood era movie quality, owing to grand masters such as Hitchcock (Rear Window particularly comes to mind in relation to this movie), the kind of minimal but effective storytelling that many seem to have forgotten about today. It makes me a little sad to see that obviously, a thriller without blood or a gunfight is not even given a chance anymore.
I don't want to pretend that the plot is terribly thick or ingenious, because it isn't. But it is enjoyable enough, even though I also admit that omitting 1 or 2 repetitions, cutting maybe 15 or 20 minutes from the film, might have done it some good (even though I personally wouldn't mind it being an hour longer). But even if you don't care for the plot at all, there's so many things to love. Not least of which the style, its sense of danger and deception more real than if everything was just spelled out, its mysterious and confident main character cooler than any of Tarantino's fast-talking wise guys. All of this of course supported by, and this is the only thing everyone seems to agree upon, cinematography at its best, each scene carefully executed and orchestrated to the point of perfection, so that each frame is like a picture in itself. A minimal electronic soundtrack to support the atmosphere and only few, but mostly poignant lines of dialogue. It all results in scenes as memorable as many of Hollywood's great classics. In fact, I think that one day this film might indeed be called a classic itself, or at least a cult classic. Movies that are disliked by critics but loved by audiences are no rarity, and I believe this one qualifies.
The characteristic of a good, professional review is that even if you completely disagree with its verdict, you can agree with its reasons. This is nowhere near the case for the original review above, which does not even try to give any explanations, or evoke the feeling that the critic gave the movie a chance. And again, I do not mean to offend the reviewer personally. In fact, I'm sure upon re-reading his article he would agree with my point. I hope that I was at least able to give another point of view and make clear that despite this critic's negative review, if you are a true old-school film buff, there is a chance that you will like, even love this movie. It has been many years since I enjoyed one so much, and I can't wait to see it again, as it felt like one that I would appreciate even more the second or third time around. There are also some excellent reviews and analyses in the User Comments section at IMDb; recommended reading, but best enjoyed after having seen the film.