Férias Permanentes

Let's not put too much lipstick on this pig. Permanent Vacation ... cool title, memorable lead, nice style and all that, but ultimately an often boring movie. The only thing that keeps this above the water is the simple fact that director Jim Jarmusch followed it up with some of the best movies of all time. So it's cool to see him blunder his way through his first oeuvre.

The fact that our hero Allie is disenfranchised because his mother is in a mental institution might constitute the oldest plot device in the book. There is really no development, no suspense, nothing intriguing. Jarmusch commits the classic mistake of every first-time filmmaker; he has yet to learn that it's not enough to put a crass character before the camera. You have to make the viewer care about him. And unfortunately you can't do that by boring the crap out of the viewer. Allie is a high-strung, messed-up kid who could franchise disenfranchisement if only he could be bothered. He has a girlfriend that should rightfully be mine, who gets a kick out of dating a pretentious freeloader with a croaky voice. He meets a bunch of strange people, nicks a car, then gets the feck out on a boat. Cue amazing end sequence shot on a boat going away from Manhattan but looking back at it.

Check it out if you're a spotty movie boffin with no social life.

Give it a miss if you're more into Hannah Montana.

This movie might be a gift for some with sophisticated and unusual gusto. However it lacks many details that are important for making a movie a fully fledged oeuvre and make it easy for a wide range of viewers to appreciate. So I would better tell about it's merits.

1. Stunning, perplexing, pervasive, strange atmosphere. It's a very atmospheric movie.

2. The protagonist may be annoying but this is the way he is! This is such a kind of a person so you have an opportunity to grasp it.

3. Weird soundtrack helps you feel the atmosphere and dissolve the viewer's mind in the atmosphere of the film.

4. The settings (images) which is pretty rare to see elsewhere.

5. If you live fresh raw simplistic movies, this one is a good example.

6. Raw sounds make you feel inside the movie.

Leave it to Jim Jarmusch to create haunting and elusive visual stories with static camera and sparse dialogue. 'Permanent Vacation' is no masterpiece and stands far from Jarmusch's greatest movies, but it clearly has the magic touch that makes the film live, and it doesn't feel boring.

Jim Jarmusch made the film right after he dropped out of film school, and it is clear that he already had his unique vision and way of telling stories. The story follows slacker Allie (Chris Parker) on his quest to find the meaning of life. The film is seemingly plotless, without proper beginning and ending, not to mention the conclusion, but it has nice flow that ties all the quirky characters and pretentious philosophical conversations into whole.

'Permanent Vacation' is very important to see if you are interested where Jim Jarmusch come from (and also Richard Linklater as 'Permanent Vacation' was major influence to his own 'Slacker').

This film which is, as far as I know, the first one by Jarmusch, when he still studied to become a film director, is original in its way to reinstall 'realism' – somebody would say 'surrealism' – into film art. He tries to make us understand a special psychological type of our time, a 'tourist in life' on 'permanent vacation'. People having decided to follow that life strategy don't engage themselves in anything or anyone. They just do what they 'feel like', not caring about what that means to others. Others are not really human. They are looked upon as a tourist might look upon an exotic and alien tribe.

However, they themselves also feel alienated and estranged, indeed. Why engage in anything? The home where I was born was bombed out 'by the Chinese', my mother is crazy, my father is dead, and there is no hope for the future.

Jarmusch is convincing in his description of this psychological type which might be typical of our time. It might be a descripton of himself. But that is not what makes the film original. It is rather the way he succeeds in making that description.

Already in this film he uses stationary cameras with horizontal, and sometimes vertical, views, and depicts the world, as exemplified by New York City, as ugly as it is to all of us, if we do not embellish it.

What Jarmusch has to tell might be banal to some but it is certainly something that exists and is quite difficult to make understandable to us. Exactly like the opinion of the main character. But I think he has been successful in mediating such an understanding to us who have chosen a different life strategy.

Assured first film from Jarmusch is pretty tough viewing to begin with. Slow moving or not moving at all and ponderous, seeming inconsequential dialogue but then somewhere along the line we find ourselves captivated. Beautifully shot with ugly/beautiful still shots of back streets of New York. Apart from a scene showing the lead guy spray painting a sub title for the film and thereby seeming to plant the film within the late 70s or 80s, the rest of the 'action' gives more the impression of taking place in the late 60s/early 70s. It may well be that Jarmusch has not set the film in the past but that his cinematic influences are from that period. In any event this is well worth a watch and as with all the man's films there is a fiercely compassionate element. Even when the characters appear completely unappealing, we are somehow encouraged to feel some degree of empathy.