LUGASHI ENTERTAINMENT NETWORK

Year: 2009

Director: Jim Jarmush

i have talked in the past on filmed but not forgotten about what i like to call "big cojones film making". this is film making and film makers that take chances, buck trends, go against conventions and expectations. i have talked about it in terms of films like No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood and most recently, Hunger. now, these are all great films, but big cojones film making doesn't always prove successful as is the case with jim jarmush's latest, The Limits Of Control.

the film is about a hitman who is hired to kill someone and then spends the next bunch of days going from hotel room to hotel room, from cafe to cafe sitting, doing tai chi, having short random-yet-similar conversations with various characters at each stop until finally he gets to go take care of the guy he was assigned to take out. oh yeah, there is also some hot women who shows up in one of his hotel rooms naked and hangs around for a few days.

the film doesn't really make much sense, but i don't think it was supposed to in a traditional narrative way. rather the film feels like some kind of filmic/spiritual/poetic journey. however it just doesn't work. it is long and boring and there is absolutely no payoff at the end. i am not asking for a big emotional or action payoff, but how about a narrative one? the end really kind of feels like a cop-out. like jarmusch doesn't care about the end. doesn't care if nothing is really explained or the climactic scene is a let down in multiple ways. it feels like for jarmusch this movie is all about the journey and not the destination. which is fine, but the problem is that the journey wasn't that appealing.

and i am not saying this as someone that doesn't like or appreciate slow films. i loved A Straight Story, gus van sant's Elephant was excellent and malick's A Thin Red Line was a beautiful filmic meditation on war. i also really liked the two other films in jarmusch's "lone-man trilogy"(as i like to call it), Dead Man and Ghost Dog.

not only was the film narrative confusing/boring, but things got off to a visually confusing start right from the beginning. in his films like Dead Man, Down By Law (my favorite of his films) and Ghost Dog i remember i visual style that not only fit the film, but was consistent throughout in creating a mood and a vision. That wasn't the case with The Limits Of Control exactly.

While the last two-thirds, or more, of the movie feels consistent, with long shots, simpler camera movement and some beautiful framing, the opening 10-15 minutes felt visually incoherent. there is a ton of cuts and edits and various angles and jump cuts, and while some of it does look great, it just felt like the visuals were controlling the direction/editing and not the other way around. just because you have some random nice shots and some interesting framings doesn't mean they will all work together. i am a very visually visceral audience and i was all over the place during the opening of the film. i would go through moments of uncomfortable viewing, in which the shots just didn't work together nor were they all that appealing anyway - to times of recognition of a beautiful frame or angle or a really nice pan.

Maybe jarmusch was really testing the limits of control that we, the audience, could have over our boredom reactions.