Permanent Vacation

Since this is considered a student film, I must admit that I cannot come up with a better reason to fall asleep during class.

"Permanent Vacation" is the darkly comic debut of acclaimed indie filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, and is unfortunately a somewhat boring film. It had plenty of things going for it, an unsettling and hypnotic musical score, a wild sense of dark humor, an interesting cast of side characters, and a beautiful visual style. However, Jarmusch sadly decided to craft this film's final product into a seemingly incomplete, ridiculously slow paced ride that is scattered with moments of genius throughout. There is plenty I liked about this movie, but it was just so TEDIOUS and DULL-this is a 70 minute long movie that really should have only been a 40 minute long movie. The main character is annoying and pretentious, a lot of the dialogue is cringe inducing (while some of it is actually pretty amazing), and by the end I just wanted to take a nap. This could have easily been a great film if Jarmusch decided to work a little bit more on crafting a main character that is at least somewhat bearable (he doesn't have to be likable, but please don't make him boring and obnoxious!), and made it less goddamn SLOW! I am all for slow movies ("Satantango" is one of my absolute favorite films), and there are a few scenes in this film that are excruciatingly slow paced but manage to work due to the slowness adding to the emotional depth and black humor of those scenes. However, a vast majority of the excruciatingly slow sequences in this film just made me want to beat my head against a brick wall so I could be entertained for once!

This isn't a bad film at all, and I would recommend it to some degree for anyone whose interested, but I would still have to recommend it with caution because it is so, so very flawed and at times unbearably boring. But, at the very least there is a lot of great humor, visual flare, quirky side characters, and beautifully discomforting background music.

Luckily, Jarmusch would improve his ways and skills by the time he made his follow up, break out feature "Stranger Than Paradise", which is not only one of the funniest movies of all time, but also one of my absolute FAVORITES!

My review was written in September 1982 after a screening at a Chelsea (Manhattan) theater.

"Permanent Vacation" is a visually arresting narrative of alienation, hailing from the New York underground school of indie filmmaking. Debuting director Jim Jarmusch evidences a keen eye for composition, but his inexperience with actors makes the film an entry for specialized audiences only.

Picture limns vignettes in the life of a restless youth, Aloysious Parker (Chris Parker) living in lower Manhattan. Through his encounters with his girlfriend (Leila Gastil), hospitalized mother (Ruth Bolton) and casual encounters with people on the oddly deserted streets of the city, we learn of Parker's dropping out from the mainstream of life and his increasing introversion. He ultimately turns his back on the unyielding Gotham homeland, setting sail (in a striking final shot of the receding Manhattan skyline) for Europe.

Structured like a road movie (but traveling on foot), "Vacation" shares the tics that have endeared so-called "new wave" films to devotees of the form but limited their general dissemination: posed, awkward acting and cold, aloof stagings. Jarmusch's use of deep focus and well-lit still-lifes in 16mm show evidence of an embryonic talent, but the interaction among his thesps rings false. Supporting cast ranges from outrageous mugging (Maria Duval) to throw-away stony readings (Leila Gasti).

Through it all lead Chris Parker, who collaborated closely with the director in fashioning the central role, resembles a little boy in a home movie pretending to be an adult. His hipster delivery and physical mannerisms are painfully self-conscious.

Certainly, Jarmusch wanted to impart the feelings of alienation and indifference his characters are feeling, but an audience needs more entry points to empathize with the screen personages. There are more than enough "who cares" narratives already being cranked out by established filmmakers.

Musical score, involving clock-like rhythmic chimes and haunting sax solos by John Lurie, is an asset.

Jim Jarmusch is a filmmaker I'll always admire and will see anything he puts out. Perhaps though my expectations of his student film, Permanent Vacation, were a little high as I thought this could be the link to Stranger Than Paradise as Who's That Knocking and Mean Streets were perfectly connected for Scorsese. This is not the case, at least from what I got from the film. It's an exercise in the mundane and plot less, a tale of a vagabond type character who may or may not be nuts, who has an insane mother, and usually just loafs around the more deconstructed and decaying parts of lower Manhattan. There are some chances for it becoming more interesting than it does, and it's really because it's a case of a filmmaker finding his footing and not getting there yet.

A few bits are noteworthy in the kind of fascination that comes with watching Jarmusch's characters- like when Allie (Chris Parker) dances to the jazz record in his apartment, or the very random scene on the island. And there's a grin for a bit part for John Lurie. But there almost comes a point where the randomness becomes too diverting, and the script and (obvious) amateurs don't help matters. A monologue in a movie theater- which another commenter said was beautiful- is rambling and loses its point even as Jarmusch sorta goes back to it. Part of that scene is interesting, but it's before the monologue with the Nicholas Ray movie. Parker as an actor has that cool, quiet swagger that would be found in Stranger Than Paradise, but he also can't carry the dialog that well (particularly in the odd voice-overs).

The end of the film caps it off as he just decides to leave New York City for good on a ship. This might have a little more resonance if what led up to it had one feeling much more for Parker than distance. Permanent Vacation is like a condensed, rough, patch-work example of everything that is wrong and sometimes right with Jarmusch's work, like an early demo from some rocker who hasn't quite got the gist of everything from his inspirations. What's right with the work is that it's very well shot, particularly for an ultra low-budget drama, co-DP'd by later talent Tom DiCillo. In the end, I almost found that the film was like a Godard work, though the ones really from the 80s as opposed to those of the 60s. It's got an artist's eye and the occasional touch of grace, but it's also a jumble of a sketchpad of what's really in the filmmaker's gifts. It is unique in that you can tell who made it, that it's not another write-off of a future hack. That it doesn't really spell the promise of Jarmusch's other 80's classics is harder to figure.

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.

Jim Jarmusch's debut 'Permanent Vacation' is said to be his student film. It does have a certain student-film feel to it mostly because of the minimalism and the actors. It is an exceptionally well shot film. However, it also felt somewhat sketchy and a few dialogues felt out of place.

In a way, 'Permanent Vacation' reminded me of 'Catcher In The Rye' as the story here follows a slacker in search for meaning in New York city (it's refreshing to see the non-glamorous, non-typical Hollywoodized but rawer side of the city) before taking a permanent vacation. The plot does sound simplistic and perhaps even uninteresting to some but the film is engaging as Jarmusch immediately gets his viewers involved into the subjective world of Allie. Whereas most of Jarmusch's films are conversational, 'Permanent Vacation' is more of a wandering. The story itself may be familiar in the filmworld but it also applies to today's society. The film's also tedious at times.

Chris Parker is quite effective as Allie Parker. The rest of the actors, with the exception of Frankie Faison, aren't particularly impressive but that doesn't ruin the film.

Although it may have some faults, Jarmusch's first experimental film is quite a compelling debut.