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Written and directed by Jim Jarmusch; starring Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett and Alfred Molina. Released to DVD on September 28, 2004. With plot driven and exciting action fare reigning supreme at the box office, studios are releasing fewer and fewer movies that feature slow moving narratives or characters who don’t talk in pull quotes or inspirational monologues. Contrary to the conventional line of thinking though, there is a place for films which allow an audience to sit back, take a deep breath and to warmly cozy up to, as writer/director Jim Jarmusch’s film Coffee & Cigarettes proves. Minus any kind of conventional plot, Coffee & Cigarettes is a series of vignettes about different people’s interactions in sparsely decorated diners over a cup of coffee and a burning cigarette. The encounters themselves range from laugh-out-loud funny to bizarre to the surreal. The best example of the latter comes when Jack White of The White Stripes pulls out a Tesla coil and turns it on only to have bandmate Meg White point out that he hasn’t allowed enough space between the coils. Surprisingly, while there are scenes of almost every kind, there aren’t any that I would label boring or uninteresting. Whether Iggy Pop is running down a list of several names that Tom Waits can call him, Alfred Molina is fawning over British director Steve Coogan, a good looking woman is talking to a waiter while reading a handgun catalog, or Roberto Benigni and comedian Steven Wright are switching dental visits, the conversations are all inherently captivating. Ironically, the enchanting and entertaining qualities of Coffee & Cigarettes have absolutely nothing to do with the bells and whistles of the project, since there simply aren’t any. Shot on black and white film stock on some of the most poorly decorated sets in the history of cinema, Jarmusch puts the onus of this film squarely onto his actors and their dialogue; one can do this when there is a good core of writing and ideas at the heart of the project. As Bill Murray’s scene with rappers RZA and GZA ended to close out Coffee & Cigarettes, I felt disappointed. Hedonist that I am, I wanted to see more. A rare statement indeed and quite indicative of the project as a whole. Jarmusch has created a one-of-a-kind feature in Coffee & Cigarettes that is so uniquely pleasurable to watch I wonder if, not when, another film of comparable surreality and quirkiness will be released.
chris neumer yes, it's true: The Coffee & Cigarettes vignette that features Roberto Benigni and Steven Wright was originally shot as a short in 1986. |
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