THE LIMITS OF CONTROL (Jim Jarmusch 2009)

[Chris Knipp]

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/04/26/arts/26lim600.jpg
JARMUSCH SHOOTING IN SPAIN WITH DE BANKOLÉ AND GARCIA BERNAL
(Photo by Teresa Isasi-Isasmend, NYTimes).



Jim Jarmusch: The Limits of Control (2009)

Review by Chris Knipp

The limits of cool

This time Jarmusch has made a thriller-cum- fairy tale whose suave hitman hero slays a gangster dragon with the string of an historic guitar. A succession of short scenes, enigmatic steps toward the goal, evokes many worlds of cinema from Cocteau to Orson Welles, with a finale out of David Lynch, but it's all Jarmusch, the style as consistent, sui generis and alive as ever. And he's working at the top of his game. This is a brilliant, virtuosic piece of Jarmuschism, the best thing he's done since Dead Man.

The heading above is not snide but admiring. To stretch to cool's outer reaches yet stay within them is an fine feat. Jarmusch came to fruition in the New York hipster world and remains true to it. This movie really is so hip it makes your teeth hurt. But it's a good hurt.

Jarmusch has reveled in comic dialogue, right up to his last, Broken Flowers. But this movie having a stony-faced and enigmatic hero who speaks in monosyllables, the director's attention has shifted to the visual. Like Woody, he's also moved to the photogenic Old World, setting the action in Spain. For images that sing, he's sensibly hired the great cinematographer Christopher Doyle to man the camera. Limits is a feast for the eye. Where the director's first films were in black and white, this time the message hinges on subtle and lovely shifts in tint.

The title refers to the finale, where a gangland boss (Bill Murray), who might as easily be a Bush era Neocon, finds his periphery penetrated. "How the f--- did you get in here?" the man demands. And protag Isaach De Bankole' replies, "I used my imagination."

Control that's pushed but never lost is embodied in the tight-lipped hitman (Bankole'), billed in the script as "Lone Man." His mission is a mystery, maybe even to him. He moves in a sphere of stoical nihilism, and his rituals are strict. It's as if Jarmusch had finessed Beckett, reincarnating the tramp in a form that's fit and elegant and moves through a revolving series of momentary sidekicks. They're recognizable actors who arrive in character, perform the ritual as guides, then spin off riffs that link with one another. In the end Lone Man finds his Godot: he kills the king. His sense of order spins outward from the body. Periodically, even in an airport toilet stall in the opening scene, he shapes the air with razor-sharp gestures in his own brand of highly symmetrical, angular Tai Chi. His frame is all tight triangles sheathed in well-cut silk suits, one in a new color for each new locale. Madrid gets shiny blue and Seville dull tan.

De Bankole's recurring Sphinx-like visage orders every successive scene. He's a samurai, like Ghost Dog or Delon in Melville's film. He doesn't sleep, lying awake through the night, and never eats -- except bits of paper and a slice of pear, and refuses sex saying "not when I'm working." He doesn't shed the suit appropriate to each locale till his train approaches the next. He always has his two espressos served to him in two separate cups.

He doesn't smoke or drink alcohol -- or talk to any strangers (as he sits sipping his espressos) who don't begin with the code question, "Usted no habla espanol, verdad?" ("You don't speak Spanish, right?"). He answers no; then two little matchboxes are exchanged. Once one has diamonds in it for a naked woman (Paz de la Huerta) but usually they have a piece of paper with something written on it for him, letters and numbers Lone Man reads and then swallows, washed down with the coffee.

Mixed in with their chitchat the folks with the new matchboxes deliver philosophical messages, e.g., "The man who thinks he knows the world will be taken to the cemetary and then he'll learn what the truth is." This comes in various languages, including literary Arabic. Another refrain: "La vida no vale nada," "Life is worth nothing," which is painted like a slogan on the Mexican ex-con's tow truck (Gael Garcia Bernal).

Another truck driver is Hiam Abass, who could be driving Isaach De Bankole' across Israeli territory, or to the outskirts of hell.

What's it all mean? Jarmusch's movies are stylish shaggy-dog put-ons, but also hilarious and magical, sometimes (often in Dead Man) both at once. Here the rage for order vies with a rage for beauty. Doyle's photography makes a train's red doors glorious. He films a rambling Seville flat to evoke Wong Kar Wai's Buenos Aires. Lone Man visits the Reina Sofía museum of contemporary art in Madrid -- each time to admire a single painting (a very good idea; too bad so few follow it), seeking in vain the secrets of the universe. For diversion, there are the people with the matchboxes. A Brit (John Hurt) complains about bohemians. A dame (Tilda Swinton) in blonde wig and raincoat (like Brigitte Lin in Chungking Express) refers to Orson Welles' Lady from Shanghai and says she likes it when people just sit in movies and don't talk.

Despite the rage for order, everything is unexpected. Swinton, with her transparent parasol, reappears in a movie poster -- and an old one. Paz de la Huerta turns up repeatedly, naked, except for glasses and a pistol, in Lone Man's flat. If Lone Man knows where his road leads, we don't. The flat's front door opens and closes with a satisfying thud and click. Like the cinematography, the sound design (by Drew Kunin) is important and masterful this time. "Conceptual Japanese noise-rock" by the group Boris surges throughout the movie like Neil Young's in Dead Man, creating a special environment and intensifying the action, and Jarmusch has confessed music is a major inspiration for his films. An intense dialogue with Christopher Doyle was an important new element in the creative process. Ultimately this film is quintessentially cinematic, a tight blend of story, image, and sound.

[Johann]

Your review captures a lot that's within this movie Chris.

Besides having the trademark Jarmusch authorial stamp, the cinematography is some of the best your eyes will ever witness, by the Amazing Christopher Doyle. Doyle and Jarmusch are a divine pairing.
Your mentioning of the glorious red train doors is just one example of the great cinematic standards that Jarmusch has.
His camera is exactly where he wants it, and it's usually a wonderful POV.

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks.

The thing about a film that's in a way almost pure style (though it's very far from being meaningless: see Howard Schumann's excellentreview in Cinescene (http://www.cinescene.com/howard/controlissues.htm) today) is that you can enjoy watching it as often as you like, and you can pick it up at any point and savor those elements of sound and astute POV and lovely Chris Doyle image.

[Johann]

Yes indeed, this type of moviemaking never goes out of style.
You can definitely watch it over and over.
Without a doubt you're right Chris: this film is his best since Dead Man.
I got a very Ghost Dog/Samurai vibe from it as well and what can I say? You like fucking films?
Really?
You LOVE cinematography?
Really?
Then this film should be one that ranks very high on your scale of standards in cinematic excellence.
Films like The Limits of Control are the films you dream about existing. Period.
Evocative, tragically hip, and achingly gorgeous, this is one for the film history books. I'm seeeing it yet again (this time at Carlton- they switched theatres. It had a very short run at Cumberland).

[Chris Knipp]

I think I lost my answer to this. I was saying the release here is weird because they started it for the whole SF Bay Area at a second-run house nobody much goes to, with zero publicity, and the first showing had four people at it. I do not understand why according to Metacritic it rates a horrible 40, but Hoberman is very favorable, and he knows what he's talking about.

Yes, it definitely has a Ghost Dog tie-in, but this is better, much better really.

[Johann]

I've been blabbering on about "controlled uncertainty" in other posts but this one is the zenith of controlled uncertainty.
I think a main reason for critics not liking it so much (I've read 4 reviews that don't have too much praise for it) is that the ending seems somewhat conventional. I think the critics are hoping for more of a payoff after sitting through all of the interesting "waiting" and what-not. Myself, I was just in love with the whole experience of it, with what Jarmusch does as a filmmaker.
I just love his style man.
That's the bottom line here.
Viewers who want their cake and eat it too might be disappointed but I was not. Not for one second of both screenings.
It's glorious.
First-rate filmmaking and creativity.
What a team Jarmusch assembles!
And they all deliver.
They all do their part, which is, being part of a timeless movie that is so cool and esoterically hip that it destroys.

Stanley Kubrick wasn't influenced by any other directors.
He basically had no attachment to "fellow film directors".
He was very aware of them, but he didn't necessarily want collaborators in the telling of the story (although it's impossible to do in the film medium), he wanted no one to emulate except maybe Max Ophuls.
Jarmusch is the exact same way. (His emulator might be Ozu?)
They both acknowledge other filmmakers (and love some films very very much) but ultimately they stand on their own, with visions and stories that cannot be put into a box.
The Limits of Control is a real feast for the cinephile.
I actually feel bad that I can't rattle off all of the references to other films or film history that I know are all over this picture.

I have such a grand feeling over Jarmusch's latest.
He's absolutely in the prime zone here.
(Not that he never wasn't). This one's got quite a bit more juice than his previous films that is extremely satisfying to this viewer.

[Johann]

At the two screenings I went to there was hardly anybody there either. Just a handful of peeps. I'm guessing they were the die-hards, the hipsters or film buffs who knew they had to get their ass to a theatre.
Carlton has a bigger profile and is right downtown, so it should have a good run now.

[Chris Knipp]

Hoberman, whose review (http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-04-29/film/jarmusch-s-mythic-limits-of-control-is-his-best-since-dead-man/) I recommend and who gets The Limits of Control thoroughly right, thinks Jarmusch hits perfection once a decade: thus, Stranger Than Paradise, Dead Man, and this. Other reviewers just don't get it. Chicago Reader's Jones sees only "an assortment of two-person rap sessions." For him Lone Man is "a stylish cool cat," full stop. As you anticipate, Jones too is disappointed in the finale: "the movie's main pleasure lies in the early scenes." You're probably right then that the ending for some viewers may feel like it lacks a payoff. They miss the fact that in much art, to use John Barth's famous line from Chimera, "The key to the treasure is the treasure." Lone Man's journey is the key and the treasure.

The initial poorly attended screening at an obscure venue is all part of some sort of marketing strategy, perhaps, designed to titillate the conoscenti. In NYC The Limits of Control is showing at the Angelika Film Center, one of the city's best-attended art house cineplexes, though not the poshest. The Landmark chain (though Angelika isn't part of that) is whowing the movie, should mean that it will come out in multiple locations in Northern California -- San Francisco, Berkeley, and down on the Peninsula. In Baltimore it's showing now at The Charles, the city's best art house.

The bad reviews will have an unfortunate effect, though, and are sad to contemplate. In the circumstances one must rejoice in the good ones. My sister who lives in Baltimore has referred me in the recent past to some very good movie writing in the town's City Paper, and it's got an astute piece (http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14823) by Steve Erikson about Jarmusch's new masterpiece: "It's proven to be extremely divisive, but like David Lynch's Inland Empire and Jarmusch's own Dead Man, the negative reactions testify to the shock that innovative cinema can produce. "

[Johann]

Jarmusch takes seemingly unimportant things and charges them with an otherworldly relevance. Just walking or looking at someone has weight in his films. He doesn't do anything willy-nilly. The consciousness of his films really grabs me and excites me.
It's hard to explain. Within the first few minutes you feel something profoundly interesting yet profoundly unknown is going down. Let him lead you...
Great movies engage you, keep you watching until the end, preferably making you a better person afterwards, either with insights you never thought of or knew, or just plain old faith in the human race because there's a filmmaker out there who can get it on and bang a gong. With an impressive Artistic integrity.

To me there is nothing better than wicked images and wicked music melded in union. Jarmusch has got that special touch when it comes to selecting the right music to match the right image.
He's got it down cold.
Other filmmakers should drop a knee to the man.
He's got some mojo that most would kill to have.
And he's uncompromising about it.
Forgive me for not talking about the film directly right now (I'll post my full "review" after I see it again this week) but something larger is going on with Jarmusch.
And it's beautiful.
Here's a man who is forging eye-grabbing, beautiful, timeless films from the heart. So precious few of those types nowadays.
His stand before the world seems to be: I'm an individual cinematic outlaw, one you can love or leave. How can any intelligent person (who has a healthy distaste for the mainstream) not stand in Jarmusch's corner and shout COMPROMISE IS FOR SUCKERS. AM I CREATING OR CONFORMING?
YOU. TELL. ME.

[Chris Knipp]

I absolutely agree. When I first walked into a theater and watched Stranger Than Paradise I was instantly on the edge of my seat. Indeed something new and special was going down. Every little detail counted and you couldn't look away for a millisecond. Right from then on he had absolute control and created an utterly brilliant new feel. Nothing like it had quite ever come before. I can remember the sheer thrill and fun of that first Jarmusch experience. He has done it again now. Not a repetition though, of course; but he hasn't lost those qualities you allude to.

You can conjure endlessly with the title, The Limits of Control. He was once able to work brilliantly with cheap black and white and virtual unknown hipster pals, but now he makes something equally tight and riveting and unique with famous actors on location in glamorous European settings (never conventional though) and the best cameraman in the business.

Somehow you can do the job at times, Johann, without even writing a conventional review. You capture the feel of Jarmusch's accomplishment better than I do:
He's got it down cold.
Other filmmakers should drop a knee to the man.
He's got some mojo that most would kill to have.
And he's uncompromising about it.
The Toronto librarians are pouring over those words even as we speak.

[Johann]

Images that sing.
That's it right there Chris.
Doyle's camerawork is ALIVE, it's bursting at the seams with living pulses.
Through the whole film.
You're right about being able to watch this film at any point and be engaged immediately. How many films can do that?
Pin you to your seat or lock your eyeballs into never looking away?
That's the kind of thing that separates a film MAKER with a film ARTIST. Jarmusch is an Artist. All the way.
He may be a hipster, but he's an ARTIST hipster.
He can deny it all he wants.
Neil Young admits he's an artist Jim!
So should you!


I feel like listening to some Screaming Jay now.
I Put a Spell on You

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JibSQCk3tW4

[Johann]

Jarmusch link you might like.
The man himself with Harvey Keitel discussing smoking, coffee, sex. Along with Lou Reed and other New Yorkers.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FANQBrCg8vw

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks, interesting. Yes, I'd get scared in Sweden too. But I gave up smoking a good while ago. Jarmusch is a funny guy.

Screamin' Jay Hawkins was one of Jarmusch's discoveries for me who was stranger than fiction. Or Paradise.

[Johann]

Screamin' Jay is Awesome.
Love that guy.
Loved him in Jarmusch's Mystery Train.
(He worked the desk at the hotel).

Jim would be a very cool cat to talk to.
He has an awesome sense of humour to go with his bullet cool.
He's the total package, man.
Bulletproof.
Can't knock him for NUTHIN'

[Chris Knipp]

Yeah, I know he was the Mystery Train clerk. His music seemed almost too good to be true. Like Jarmusch thought him up. Mystery Train was how I learned about his existence. Jarmusch from those YouTube videos clearly is a guy who expresses himself in a forthright and accessible manner. He's quite down to earth.

[Chris Knipp]

I've searched in vain for any more favorable, or perceptive, reviews of this excellent new film by Jim Jarmusch. The others I've seen are niggling at best and even when they have good things to say about all Jarmusch's oeuvre, they call this example "middling" (CS Monitor). So we still have Howard Schumann,
Cinescene (http://www.cinescene.com/howard/controlissues.htm); Steve Erikson, The Baltimore City Paper (http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=14823); J. Hoberman, The Village Voice (http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-04-29/film/jarmusch-s-mythic-limits-of-control-is-his-best-since-dead-man/); and me. Pretty sad really. If anyone finds others, please report.

Needless to say, Hoberman's statement bears the greatest weight, and is quite decisive: the title of his review is simply
Jarmusch's Mythic Limits of Control His Best Since Dead Man. Pay attention, people.

And when I look for the expanding release schedule and the lousy reviews I'm a little afraid the film isn't getting the audience in theaters it deserves. I hope I'm wrong but this is looking like lost in the shuffle and that's a very regrettable fate for one of the three best American films of the first half of 2009.

[Chris Knipp]

Andrew O'Hehir of Salon.com has some very favorable things to say about The Limits of Control in his introduction (http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/btm/feature/2009/04/30/jarmusch/) to an interview with Jarmusch.
This is not Jarmusch's easiest film, nor his most audience-friendly, but for my money it's the most rigorous and beautiful construction of his entire career. Maybe I can put it this way: If you liked Jarmusch's 1995 "Dead Man," which has a definite cult following but was a commercial failure, "The Limits of Control" is the movie you've been wanting him to make ever since. I'd say O'Hehir absolutely gets it. This is what I'd say, and if fits with Hoberman's assessment. I love O'Herhir's reference to Bach here:
Working with the Hong Kong-based cinematographer Christopher Doyle (who shot Wong Kar-wai's early films), Jarmusch has created something like a Bach fugue, a complex set of themes and variations. It has the suave hero and the visual vocabulary of a crime thriller, one in which De Bankolé follows a set of clues and codes from one strange encounter to the next, each one moving him from Madrid to Seville and onward into the Spanish countryside. (Let me reassure you about one thing right now: He does have a clear purpose in mind, and his journey does have a destination. This is not one of those postmodern stories with no ending.)
And that's an important point too. This is not merely an exercise in hipsterism as some too easlily conclude. And it's rhythmic variations are very much musical.

Betsy Sharkey's review (http://www.fandango.com/thelimitsofcontrol_122140/criticreviews?review_source=LosAngelesTimes) in the Los Angeles Times is also admiring. "Absorbing and visually mesmerizing," she says, and while she admits some may find the film self indulgent (they obviously do, or self-satisfied, or something of the sort), she is "deeply satisfied camp."

[Johann]

I like Howard's ideas about what Jarmusch is trying to get across.
"Reality is Arbitrary"- it is. It really is.
Bob Dylan said if God is one thing, he's arbitrary. An arbitrary Creator, who doesn't seem to be too interested in the aftermath of creation as he is in Creation itself.
The more I ruminate on it, the more I'm certain that God has only one purpose: Creating. It seems as though God places no meaning on anything except creation. The rest he leaves up to us to find out for him. God knows about his Creation through us. We "fax" him the info of our experience.

How do you explain bad things happening to good people or great things happening to bad peeps?

My naval history friend (who'll remain nameless) thinks that there was divine intervention in the winning of WWII.

I know this doesn't have much to do with Jarmusch's movie.
Just wanted to throw these sentiments up.

[Johann]

And yes, this film is being overlooked by millions.
It's sickening.

[Chris Knipp]

Whatever works for you old boy. I am feeling more encouraged about the movie's fate/future after having looked up more reviews. The Metacritic rating of "40" is discouraging, though. It makes little sense for any film by a director of Jarmusch's caliber and level of craft to be rated as mediocre, even if it was not one of his best, which it is.

Focus Features' website (http://www.filminfocus.com/focusfeatures/film/the_limits_of_control) for LIMITS OF CONTROL has material about positive reviews and details about the theatrical releases that allows you to find out where it is showing now. The trailer there is unfortunate, though. He ought to have made his own trailer, as PT Anderson does. The unfolding release system makes it really hard to know without careful study how widely a movie is or will be seen theatrically.

[Johann]

Jarmusch himself said that he pays attention to the bad reviews he gets. I don't think he alters his working methods because of them but he said he likes reading the bad ones more than the good. And I can see why.

Too many people gushing about your movies can turn a guy off.

[Chris Knipp]

I don't know why either kind of review would be any use, to him. Personelly for us or for me the good ones are more usefl. The badones just dismiss the film, and don't say much about it.

[oscar jubis]

I have been wondering for a while how/whether to contribute to this thread. I consider myself a fan of Jarmusch. I have enjoyed all his films to varying degrees. I don't have a review of THE LIMITS OF CONTROL to post. If I were to write a review it would be a mildly favorable one. The review would reflect general agreement with the virtues both of you find in it. If I were to read the generally unfavorable reviews the film received, many of which probably written by folks who don't know or don't like Jarmusch's films, I would probably take a positive stance to provide some balance. On the other hand, this is not a review and I am writing in the context of one admiring post after another. I find that the virtues of the film are as noteworthy as its serious limitations. And that the comments from both of you only reflect one side of my appreciation of the film. My clearest disagreement with your comments probably has to do with comparisons between THE LIMITS OF CONTROL and the films made by Jarmusch after DEAD MAN (all of which I found more enjoyable than this latest film).

As far as the films he made during his first decade as a filmmaker, one thing I love about them is their random, handcrafted quality. There was room for improvisation. The actors were granted a certain freedom to create the characters, or at least the films gave that impression.

It is interesting to note that Jarmusch's transculturalism has been characteristic since the beginning: the Japanese couple touring rock and blues shrines in MYSTERY TRAIN, the cousin from Hungary visiting her Cleveland relatives in STRANGER THAN PARADISE, the casting of Roberto Benigni in DOWN BY LAW; NIGHT ON EARTH is simultaneously set in Los Angeles, NYC, Helsinki, Paris and Rome.

I believe DEAD MAN is Jarmusch's masterpiece. The main reason, as far as I am concerned, is the multiple ways in which the film resonates culturally and historically. Moreover, even if you disregard the inherent sociological allusions, the relationship between Blake and Nobody is endlessly fascinating. They are both such likable characters.

Anyway, I should be saying something about THE LIMITS OF CONTROL. I enjoyed its formal qualities very much. I enjoyed it as an audiovisual experience. I do miss anything resembling the central relationship in DEAD MAN, or the friendship between Bill Murray and his Ethiopian neighbor in BROKEN FLOWERS. There isn't anything in THE LIMITS OF CONTROL that evokes the loneliness of Chloe Sevigny as a young actress alone in her trailer in Jarmusch's segment ("Int. Trailer Night") of the compilation film TEN MINUTES OLDER. The brief performances by famous actors in the new film don't reverberate the way similar performances do in COFFEE AND CIGARRETTES. In the latter, it is fun for the viewer to ponder the difference between the personas of the actors and the way they play themselves in the vignettes that constitute the film. Their scenes in THE LIMITS OF CONTROL are too constrained by ritual to signify beyond the film's flimsy plot. In GHOST DOG, when the protagonist kills there is a certain explanation. It involves a reaction to betrayal and the necessity of self-defense. THE LIMITS OF CONTROL has a plot that is entirely abstract and devoid of any affective connection. Even the "lone man" is not developed beyond its mythic profile.

By the way, the music in this film pales in comparison to the music composed and played by Neil Young and RZA for DEAD MAN and GHOST DOG.

[Chris Knipp]

I like the high style of LIMITS OF CONTROL. Ritual is not necessarly a constraint. I like elegance, and a director who works to please himself, not to bring in millions of dollars or popcorn-buyers.

On the other hand I totally agree that DEAD MAN is a masterpiece. I love Jarmusch, but some more than others of course. I agree with most of your observations. But if we're talking about 2009, LIMITS OF CONTROL stands out as one of the great ones of the year.

[Michuk]

I have finally managed to watch "The Limits of Control". It was not an easy task being in London. It's only being shown for a couple of ways in a small venue called ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts) which seems like the best venue for the kind of movie Jarmusch created.

To me, "Limits of control" is cinema in its pure, non-compromising form. Fantastic music and great artistic cinematography together with the plot focusing on a lone journey of a man reminded me of "Dead Man" by the same director. And even though the movies are very different, they both manage to create the mystical atmosphere that takes you to a different, simpler world. One of Jarmusch's best.

Mr Ebert doesn't seem to agree though: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090506/REVIEWS/905069987/1001 and even though I think he's far from right, I enjoyed his review a lot, it's a must-read!