The Limits of Control

I really enjoy some of Jim Jarmusch's work (Night on Earth, Mystery Train and Dead Man), and I thought that I would like this film based on the story (or lack thereof) and the soundtrack, however, I was quite disappointed. The film is very slow, and while this can work and be beneficial to the plot, I think that it dragged on far too long in this instance. There was a lot going on visually, which made up for the slowness to a degree, but it seemed as if there was too much time to take it all in. I felt myself noticing the same things over and over in various shots/scenes, because there wasn't anything else to do besides look, which made me feel like I was staring at the film more so than actually watching it.

As for the soundtrack, I am a fan of some of the artists on it (Boris, Sunn, Earth, etc.), which is part of the reason I wanted to see this film initially. Because these bands can have a very slow, droney sound, I was very interested to see how the mood of the music would work with the tone of the film. I expected the two to compliment each other, but instead, the soundtrack just made everything drag on. Because the film progressed as such a slow pace, I assumed that it was leading up to a grand climax, but the film's culmination barely stood out.

I will say that I admired the film from a technical aspect, and I enjoyed seeing some familiar faces from Jarmusch's earlier work, but I don't think I'll ever watch it again.

Why Jim Jarmush? Why? Why did you of all directors have to produce such a dud? Why couldn't you have passed on that burden to a director without your prowess or your imagination? I thought we had a good thing going here. You make awesome movies and I watch them. It's a virtually flawless system. But no. You had to go and make The Limits of Control, a painfully pointless and stagnant film with no plot, no purpose, and no emotion. It follows a lone man as he searches for... something. There's no telling what, as the film has no backstory. It really has no story for that matter. This nameless man travels Europe, meeting various people and having vague conversations about nothing with them, only to receive a matchbox with a piece of paper in it at the end of every conversation. The man then proceeds to eat the paper. Any synopsis I could write about this film will make no sense and, unfortunately, seeing the film won't clear anything up.

This is such an utterly pointless film. It is incredibly experimental to a Lynchian degree, but Lynch always wraps up his films with a point. His films have a sense of purpose and meaning, and they get somewhere. The Limits of Control does not. We begin and end the film equally confused as to what is going on at all. The film does have a intriguing auteur look to it, accompanied by a great soundtrack and overall eerie pacing. But these nice things can only care a plot less story so far. The visual quality of the film begins as something compelling to look at and to absorb, but slowly becomes a very boring excuse for art film style visuals.

I think what really irks me about this film is just how serious it takes itself, and how profound it thinks it is. The film is incredibly pretentious and every conversation and every long, drawn-out, pointless scene is more self-indulgent that the previous. The film wants you to believe that there is some greater meaning to what it is all saying, but it's all just the ramblings of a pretentious goof. This is a film that insults our intelligence, as it isn't difficult to see past the faux profundities to the self-important nonsense that this film really is.

And what's even worse is how much the film tries to lead you on. It is alright to begin a film with no real backstory, throwing us right in the middle of the action. The Ancient Greeks invented the idea in the first place calling it in medias res, so I have no opposition to that. What I'm not okay with is films that just go in circles, never resolving anything and never filling us in on necessary backstory, or helping us out with the story at all for that matter. This isn't a thinking film in which we have to decipher the clues we are given by the characters and the story. There are no clues and this is a completely braindead film that thinks it has a brain that is smarter than all of us. Well, it's wrong. It's not intelligent, just pretentious.

I think the one place I can find solace in my despair over how bad this film was is that it doesn't give the impression that Jim Jarmush has forgotten how to make movies. That is a thought I reserve for films that are just bad in every way. The Limits of Control is Jarmush trying something different and new, but just failing miserably. It's really no more than a failed experiment, and I hope Jarmush realizes this. I hope he doesn't feel like he succeeded in making The Limits of Control a progressive and compelling film that transcends all cinematic boundaries. I hope that he has enough sense to realize he dropped a stinking pretentious mess on us and that he will have to clean it up if he wants to gain back some respect.

Someone needs to tell Jarmusch and like-minded directors and writers that monotone conversations about the nature/meaning/origin of so-and-so are to art films what sweaty men walking away from explosions in slow motion are to big-budget post-Bruckheimer action flicks. For all of Jarmusch's talk in his interview with Gavin Smith in Film Comment about avoiding clichés he seemed to fall into that trap pretty easily. Much of the dialogue in the film is really quite horrible, shallow, miserable artsy nonsense. Then you have some conversations, particularly in the latter half of the film, which are absolutely wonderful. You also have to look at the fact that the 'horrible' dialogue in the previous conversations ultimately worked as they were necessary for the thematic aspects of the film to make sense in the beautifully confusing way they do. Glad to say I was wrong about Jarmusch being the emperor's new clothes and that "The Limits of Control" is a spectacular aesthetic achievement thanks to both Jarmusch and DP Chris Doyle's work. It's absolutely wonderful overall, leading up to an absolutely fantastic final thirty minutes. It has its flaws and certainly could've done without people approaching and leaving in slow motion which just seemed really cheesy but overall this is just a top-notch film, and the comparisons made to Rivette films like "Pont du nord", "Paris nous appartient", and "Out 1" in the aforementioned Film Comment interview by Gavin Smith and Jarmusch himself not only make sense, but are well-deserved. A cinematic enigma, and nothing is more attractive to me than that.

I guess for Jim Jarmusch, the shot, not the characters or the narrative is the building block and center of the film. Each shot is almost a minor Magritte painting with some detail incongruous enough to make us chuckle or wonder WTF. Why does the lead character order two cups of espresso? Why does the character wear those too tight shiny suits? What is the meaning of the constant exchanging of match boxes? This movie could be called "Match boxes and coffee" instead of "Cigarettes and Coffee," an even slower movie Jarmusch. The narrative is without excitement or tension. For a brief moment I had hoped that Jarmusch would pick up the pace when the hero saw the armed camp/complex. I thought the hero would race down and shoot ten or twenty men and jump out of the way of army jeeps and bound over walls to get inside. Nope, not this movie. Jarmusch just has the character appear inside the complex in the next scene and mysteriously hint at the way he got in. The movie does pick up in about five or six scenes with Paz De La Huerta. She is just called Nude and she appears in a series of what seems like nude poses. It is quite erotic and does make the first half of the picture move entertaining. There is also a nice dialogue scene about Orson Welles "Lady from Shanghai." These are the highlights of the film for me ten minutes watching Paz De La Huerta act without clothes, a discussion of "Lady from Shanghai" and those too tight shiny suits. Amusing, but too laid back.

I think I can somehow imagine what Jarmusch was trying to deliver with this - some sort of an existentialistic feeling of being abandoned in this world, and how arts and music etc. reflect our world-view and life in general. May have worked in theory, but definitely not in practice. To me, Jim Jarmusches works are all about cutting the technical nonsense to the minimum, and replacing it with powerful inner depth, such as interesting and multileveled characters - this one seemed to be the other way around.

The whole thing smelt like new wave and Godard ten miles away, with the whole style, and all the references to it (for example the Spanish girl holding the gun to Bankolé's face was almost exact reference to Godard's Made in U.S.A.) - and I didn't like the scent of it one bit. It was superficial, and didn't evoke any feelings in me. It was like Jarmusch was trying to speak with a language that wasn't his own. And the whole anti-capitalist "black James Bond" theme came as just naive to me.

About the only things that left me a good taste in my mouth, was the feeling of loneliness and emptiness that it delivered, plus John Hurt's short appearance with his monologue with the Kaurismäki- reference. That's about it, and even the mood was almost ruined by the two-pence Neil Young that kept on howling on the back.

Never would have believed to say this about a Jarmusch movie, but it was a huge disappointment.