Stranger Than Paradise (15.)
Directed by Jim Jarmusch. 1984
Starring John Lurie, Eszter Balint, Richard Edson and Cecillia Stark. Black and white. 89 mins.
Since it came out last year I have been working my way through the film in Soda's Jim Jarmusch Collection. On March 23rd it comes out on DVD so it is time to round it up by covering his breakthrough second feature Stranger Than Paradise.
I remember going to see it on its release and being rather bored with it and mystified by the rave review it received in Time Out. (Time Out film reviews – as unreliable today as they've always been.) Of course watching it again in the light of what Jarmusch went on to be you can see all his ideas and themes finding successful form for the first time. With any other filmmaker Stranger Than Paradise would be the early film that the diehard fans acclaim as his best; the purest expression of his talent, before he became tainted by bigger budgets and bigger stars. Jarmusch though has managed to ring fence what was special about him, to continue along his singular furrow even as the budgets became slightly larger and the casts became considerably more prestigious.
Divided into three parts, it starts with Billy (Lurie) in New York being forced to put up his cousin from Budapest Eva (Balint) for 10 days before she moves to live with her aunt (Stark) in Cleveland. In the second part Billy and his friend Eddie (Edson) drive out to see her in Cleveland while the third is an impromptu trip to Florida.
Jarmusch has never been one to flood an audience with ideas. He sticks to the two or three he knows will work and gently squeezes all the juice out of them, generally stopping before it gets dull. Stranger Than Paradise is about the immigrant experience but also how everything is the same wherever you go. Aided by Tom DeCillo's grainy, black and white photography the winter heat of Florida's beaches is just as bleak as the icy wastelands of Cleveland. (New York is given an almost Eraserhead air of menace.) The whole film is a test run for a visual joke in follow up Down By Law where three prisoner escape from a prison flee across the swamps and find a deserted hut to hide in – that’s identical to the cell they've just escaped from. It's a bleak film in most respects yet it passes before you rather pleasantly. Nobody has ever topped Jarmusch's deadbeat deadpan and his skill for making despair and spiritual paucity light hearted.
Directed by Jim Jarmusch. 1984
Starring John Lurie, Eszter Balint, Richard Edson and Cecillia Stark. Black and white. 89 mins.
Since it came out last year I have been working my way through the film in Soda's Jim Jarmusch Collection. On March 23rd it comes out on DVD so it is time to round it up by covering his breakthrough second feature Stranger Than Paradise.
I remember going to see it on its release and being rather bored with it and mystified by the rave review it received in Time Out. (Time Out film reviews – as unreliable today as they've always been.) Of course watching it again in the light of what Jarmusch went on to be you can see all his ideas and themes finding successful form for the first time. With any other filmmaker Stranger Than Paradise would be the early film that the diehard fans acclaim as his best; the purest expression of his talent, before he became tainted by bigger budgets and bigger stars. Jarmusch though has managed to ring fence what was special about him, to continue along his singular furrow even as the budgets became slightly larger and the casts became considerably more prestigious.
Divided into three parts, it starts with Billy (Lurie) in New York being forced to put up his cousin from Budapest Eva (Balint) for 10 days before she moves to live with her aunt (Stark) in Cleveland. In the second part Billy and his friend Eddie (Edson) drive out to see her in Cleveland while the third is an impromptu trip to Florida.
Jarmusch has never been one to flood an audience with ideas. He sticks to the two or three he knows will work and gently squeezes all the juice out of them, generally stopping before it gets dull. Stranger Than Paradise is about the immigrant experience but also how everything is the same wherever you go. Aided by Tom DeCillo's grainy, black and white photography the winter heat of Florida's beaches is just as bleak as the icy wastelands of Cleveland. (New York is given an almost Eraserhead air of menace.) The whole film is a test run for a visual joke in follow up Down By Law where three prisoner escape from a prison flee across the swamps and find a deserted hut to hide in – that’s identical to the cell they've just escaped from. It's a bleak film in most respects yet it passes before you rather pleasantly. Nobody has ever topped Jarmusch's deadbeat deadpan and his skill for making despair and spiritual paucity light hearted.
