Mystery Train (15.)
Directed by Jim Jarmusch.
1988. Starring Joe Strummer, Steve Buscemi, Ricky Aviles, Nicholetta Braschi, Elisabeth Bracco, Masatoshi Nagase, Yuki Kudo, Cinque Lee and Screaming Jay Hawkins. 110 mins.
At the beginning a train, not overly mysterious, rolls down the tracks into Memphis, Tennessee and approximately a day later another one rolls out again. In between three sets of characters – some locals, some just passing through – play out three separate stories with overlapping elements. Their tales are straightforward and easy enough to follow, yet are stacked with mystery and magic.
You may love Stranger Than Paradise and/or Down By Law but Mystery Train, his fourth film, is really the one when Jim Jarmusch announced himself as something truly special. It shows off his two greatest attributes. Firstly, he really loves people; has an infinite capacity for enjoying watching them walk around and talk, or not talk, to each other. Secondly, he has a great ability to make something that is more than the sum of its parts.
Individually the three vignettes of Mystery Train are nothing special.
In Far From Yokohama a young Japanese couple (Nagase, Kudo) roll into town intent on visiting the Sun Records recording studios and Graceland. The pair are self consciously cool and have strikingly different way of relating the motherland of rock'n'roll: he is an unsmiling pastiche of stand offish sculpted cool, espousing the refined admiration for Carl Perkins; she loves Elvis and is puppy-dog eager to love and be loved by all things American.
In A Ghost a just widowed Italian (Braschi) is trying to organise the transfer of her husband's coffin back to Rome. She is largely uninterested in America; most Americans she meets regard her as an easy mark.
In Lost In Space, after losing his girl and his job in one day an ex-pat Brit, nicknamed Elvis (Strummer) starts drinking heavily, waving a gun around and drags in his best friend (Aviles) and brother-in-law (Buscemi) to the madness.
All of these stories pass through a fleapit hotel which doesn't even have TVs in the rooms and are linked by a rendition of Blue Moon by Elvis and a gunshot.
Now initially none of this seems anything more than mildly diverting. The Jarmusch style is as casual as ever and though Robby Muller's colour cinematography makes Memphis look even more derelict and abandoned than his black'n'white camera did New Orleans in Down By Law. Derelict but beautiful: there is a twice repeated shot of downtown Memphis at dusk, with green lights just beginning to glow in the encroaching murk which is just lovely, like a remembered image.
Somewhere around the middle, during A Ghost, the little connections start to add up, make a greater sense of it all. It's a marvellous mediation on the gap between between the reality of the States and the pop culture version of the States that it has projected around the world. This Pop culture version is so strong that it can largely inure visitors to the reality. Only Braschi's character seems to see the country for what it is, yet it is to her that its greatest icon chooses to reach out to.
On the following morning the three sets of characters go off about their lives. And as the film draws to a close you may feel like you've really experienced something, a multi-stranded slice of America that is simultaneously light and substantial. It's a rare feeling, perhaps only Altman's Nashville is its match.
Mystery Train is not a film that sits you down and tells you anything about the States, but in its own roundabout way it says a great deal and says it very clearly, without ever specifying exactly what it is.
Directed by Jim Jarmusch.
1988. Starring Joe Strummer, Steve Buscemi, Ricky Aviles, Nicholetta Braschi, Elisabeth Bracco, Masatoshi Nagase, Yuki Kudo, Cinque Lee and Screaming Jay Hawkins. 110 mins.
At the beginning a train, not overly mysterious, rolls down the tracks into Memphis, Tennessee and approximately a day later another one rolls out again. In between three sets of characters – some locals, some just passing through – play out three separate stories with overlapping elements. Their tales are straightforward and easy enough to follow, yet are stacked with mystery and magic.
You may love Stranger Than Paradise and/or Down By Law but Mystery Train, his fourth film, is really the one when Jim Jarmusch announced himself as something truly special. It shows off his two greatest attributes. Firstly, he really loves people; has an infinite capacity for enjoying watching them walk around and talk, or not talk, to each other. Secondly, he has a great ability to make something that is more than the sum of its parts.
Individually the three vignettes of Mystery Train are nothing special.
In Far From Yokohama a young Japanese couple (Nagase, Kudo) roll into town intent on visiting the Sun Records recording studios and Graceland. The pair are self consciously cool and have strikingly different way of relating the motherland of rock'n'roll: he is an unsmiling pastiche of stand offish sculpted cool, espousing the refined admiration for Carl Perkins; she loves Elvis and is puppy-dog eager to love and be loved by all things American.
In A Ghost a just widowed Italian (Braschi) is trying to organise the transfer of her husband's coffin back to Rome. She is largely uninterested in America; most Americans she meets regard her as an easy mark.
In Lost In Space, after losing his girl and his job in one day an ex-pat Brit, nicknamed Elvis (Strummer) starts drinking heavily, waving a gun around and drags in his best friend (Aviles) and brother-in-law (Buscemi) to the madness.
All of these stories pass through a fleapit hotel which doesn't even have TVs in the rooms and are linked by a rendition of Blue Moon by Elvis and a gunshot.
Now initially none of this seems anything more than mildly diverting. The Jarmusch style is as casual as ever and though Robby Muller's colour cinematography makes Memphis look even more derelict and abandoned than his black'n'white camera did New Orleans in Down By Law. Derelict but beautiful: there is a twice repeated shot of downtown Memphis at dusk, with green lights just beginning to glow in the encroaching murk which is just lovely, like a remembered image.
Somewhere around the middle, during A Ghost, the little connections start to add up, make a greater sense of it all. It's a marvellous mediation on the gap between between the reality of the States and the pop culture version of the States that it has projected around the world. This Pop culture version is so strong that it can largely inure visitors to the reality. Only Braschi's character seems to see the country for what it is, yet it is to her that its greatest icon chooses to reach out to.
On the following morning the three sets of characters go off about their lives. And as the film draws to a close you may feel like you've really experienced something, a multi-stranded slice of America that is simultaneously light and substantial. It's a rare feeling, perhaps only Altman's Nashville is its match.
Mystery Train is not a film that sits you down and tells you anything about the States, but in its own roundabout way it says a great deal and says it very clearly, without ever specifying exactly what it is.
