THE LIMITS OF CONTROL
US, 2009, 116 minutes, Colour.
Isaach De Bankole, Jean- Francois Stevenin, Luis Tosar, Paz de la Huerta, Tilda Swinton, Youki Kudoh, John Hurt, Gael Garcia Bernal, Hiam Abbass, Bill Murray.
Directed by Jim Jarmusch.
For a quarter of century, Jim Jarmusch has been making independent American films. He has developed something of a cult following rather than being popular with a mass audience. His 2005 Broken Flowers may have come closest to being a popular success.
The Limits of Control is one for his devotees. The general audience might find it too much of a strain, too slow and puzzling.
A caption at the end of the film links control with power. This is a theme of the film. But, it is not always clear. We watch a gradual unfolding of the central character and his mysterious mission which eventually shows us that it is a protest (a rather deadly one, not a peaceful protest) against globalisation and the power and control that some individuals are able to assume (and, since Bill Murray is the ultimate villain, Americans).
The film is a contemporary picaresque adventure. Isaach de Bankole appears as a lone messenger (who changes his natty clothes often and is frequently presented lying on hotel beds waiting for contacts) who is employed by a Frenchman and a Cajun for a not-quite-clear purpose which involves, messages in match-boxes which the lone man then swallows, diamonds and luggage – what Hitchcock might have called Maguffins. While we concentrate on those, the more important action is probably happening where we are not looking.
Most of the stages of the lone man's journey are in Spain, ranging from Madrid to Andalusia. At each stop, he signals who he is by ordering two espressos in two different cups. Couriers turn up, ask him if he speaks Spanish (he doesn't) and then do the matchbox and message routine. But, more significantly for Jarmusch meaning and for meanings in movies, each has a spiel (the lone man tends just to listen) on music, cinema, art, drugs, bohemians, Palestinians... Since these messengers are played by actors like John Hurt, Gael Garcia Bernal, Hiam Abbass, they make for interesting cameos. Tilda Swinton is the messenger who talks about films and refers to Hitchcock (Suspicion and changed coffee cups). She also talks about Orson Welles and The Lady from Shanghai and Rita Hayworth's only screen appearance as blonde. In fact Tilda Swinton is wearing a white wig (the same colour as Jim Jarmusch's own distinctive white hair). She also offers an opinion that she prefers movies where people just sit and don't say anything – which she proceeds to do. Bill Murray sums up these conversations in the final confrontation with the lone man so they are clearly central to the film's themes.
On the other hand, why didn't the lone man simply fly to southern Spain after being commissioned by the two in the airport and do his job? Why the journey, the codes, the messages and the cameos!
The film is not boring if these kinds of elements get audience attention, but it is not particularly interesting either. And, maybe, that is what makes it a 'cult movie'.
1.The films of Jim Jarmusch, his following? Style, themes? Resemblances between films? Verbal and visual?
2.The title, the initial quotation from Rimbaud? The end caption about control and power?
3.The Spain setting: Madrid, the countryside, Seville, Andalusia? The streets, the modern buildings, the ancient? Cafés and hotels? The countryside? The final fortification? The musical score, the themes for action and suspense?
4.The film as self-referential: ghost dog, eastern mysticism? Mystery train and voyages? The range of discussions: art, science, cinema, bohemians, music, the effect of drugs? The American and his summarising these conversations? Their purpose, for intellectual stimulation, emotion? Curiosity?
5.The slow pace of the film, the focus on the killer, his silence, always having two espressos in separate cups? The notes, the matchboxes? The range of diversions of attention? His mission? So much waiting, silence, resting on his bed in the hotel rooms? The tai chi? Changing his clothes, the suits? The art galleries, the paintings, the contemplation, the buildings? The final painting and its being covered – blank, Tabuka Rasa? To what purpose? The audience contemplating – but how much did the audience have to contemplate? The comment by the blonde that she liked films where characters sat in silence?
6.The introduction to the Lone Man? His exercises, changing his clothes, neat and businesslike? At the airport, the Creole and the Frenchman? The translations? Orders? Mystery?
7.The flight, the cups? Going to the hotel? The codes and his swallowing the paper? Madrid and his continual return to the café, the waiter and his response to the two cups?
8.The hotel room? The naked woman? Provocation, sexuality, his resistance, platonic, the reasons? She and her glasses, the raincoat? Adjacent on the bed? Her later reappearance, swimming, her death?
9.Madrid and the musician? All the contacts with their sunglasses, taking them off, asking whether he spoke Spanish?
10.Madrid and the blonde, her hair the same colour as Jarmusch’s hair? The reference to The Lady from Shanghai, Rita Hayworth as a blonde, dyeing? Hitchcock and the cups in Suspicion? Her comments about silence? Her later arrest and being taken away?
11.The voyage on the train, the Japanese girl, the discussion about science, atoms and molecules?
12.The man with the guitar, John Hurt and his English style? Looking at the people round about, the young people, the comment on bohemians, geographical and cultural, artists as bohemians?
13.Arriving at Seville, going onto the roof, the Mexican, the cello? Discussions, drugs? Introducing him to the driver?
14.The driver, her Palestinian background, silently driving him, her words in Arabic? Picking him up later and taking him away?
15.The countryside, seeing the fortress, the nature of his mission? The guards with guns? His infiltrating the barriers? The American asking him – and his saying he used his imagination to get in?
16.The American, his company, control, power? Insulting the group? The group and the nature of their rebellion against power, Americans, control? The protests, killing? The locked room, soundproof, the American’s death – and the discovery of the body?
17.His driving away, changing, more relaxing clothes, going to his next mission?
18.The film as melodrama, the emotional response, studying characters, time, waiting, silence? Intellectual discussion, the nature of art? The film embodying all these issues?
