Movies into Film

Coffee and Cigarettes

Directed by Jim Jarmusch

USA, 2004

Watching the Smokers

Iggy and Waits huff and puff (Photo: United Artists)

There’s one sublime moment in Jim Jarmusch’s newest assemblage of home movie vignettes, and it arrives during the final scene, long after several walkouts in the preview audience had gone home. Two old men (Taylor Mead and Bill Rice) bask in the most existential coffee break I have ever seen at the cinema or anywhere else. Mead—his inimitable, slightly fey voice makes every line reading a chiseled gem—mentions feeling at a loss with the world, which leads into a reminiscence of Mahler, and then—exquisitely, out of nowhere, like a shaft of sunlight piercing the tenebrious black-and-white gloom—they hear Dame Janet Baker’s recording of the Mahler song, “I Have Lost Track of the World,” and we hear it as they do, in a reverie. The two men, apparently workers at an armory, though both look well past retirement age, raise their coffee cups in a toast. Mead toasts Paris in the 20s; Rice seconds it, and adds musingly, “…and to New York in the 70s, the late 70s.”

Something in the way Rice trills “the late 70s” lent me hope that Jarmusch may have at last hit on a subject, an avenue worth cinematically exploring, an antidote to the writer-director’s threadbare retreads of his juvenile obsessions. In spite of the recycled allusions to Graceland, Jarmusch does have a story to tell that’s uniquely his own. I don’t know that he can or will ditch the downtown hipster posturing to tell it; if he ever does, if he brings his sensibility to bear on a time and place that he actually cares about, the results would almost certainly exceed the stale, arid, nearly moribund Coffee and Cigarettes.

GZA, RZA, Bill Murray (Photo: United Artists)

With a couple of exceptions, the strung-together skits follow a formula: two people meet, in a bar or café or coffeehouse, and they proceed to squabble over absolutely nothing. One person gets to be rude, and the other looks crestfallen as the first contradicts every gesture or comment. The puniest, most desiccated of these pairs a bullying Tom Waits with a deer-in-the-headlights Iggy Pop. The most expansive variation on this dismal theme, one that has some bite to it, unfolds between Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan. Molina invites Coogan to tea to discuss genealogical research; Coogan’s face, framed by his ringlet curls, beautifully registers disbelieving disgust. He gives a terrifically held-in comic performance (whereas Pop and Waits are sub-amateurish). After lying to Molina about not having a cell phone, Coogan has a few seconds of minor panic—he fears sudden ringing will give him away—that show an actor in full command of his resources right down to this slight, pantomimed bit. Jarmusch’s compositions and cuts here are generally more expressive than in the other sections, as if he were stimulated to do better. On the left side of the frame, Molina and Coogan occupy a second-floor table that rests by a railing; there’s a sense of space behind and below them, and the well-lit interior provides a welcome contrast to the predominantly dark settings.

In the film’s most visually inventive segment, “Delirium,” where the camera swirls over images you’ll have to see for yourself, Bill Murray and the hip-hop artists RZA and GZA share a few giddy ripostes. Murray, swigging java straight from a pot, seems to have recovered the comic timing Sofia Coppola so thoroughly sublimated. The musicians chide him for smoking—doesn’t he know that nicotine is used in insecticides?

Murray: “Well, it’s good if it kills bugs, isn’t it?

RZA: “Are you a bug, Bill Murray?”

Would that all of Coffee and Cigarettes were as much fun. It’s mainly torture, until the last three or four vignettes. Along the way, Jack White again displays the vivid presence that made his Cold Mountain cameo so memorable. White’s dark-circled eyes, full lips, and emotive facial maneuvers would have assured him of stardom in the silent era. Cate Blanchett, in a dual role, works opposite herself well enough; the annoying Roberto Benigni, as a jittery, espresso-swilling chain-smoker, reaffirms his status as a no-talent. – NPT

May 7, 2004

Movies into Film

npt [at] moviesintofilm [dot] com

Home