Tuesday 20 October 2009

The Limits of Control


2nd film of the London Film Festival 2009. So far so bad. I always suspected that Jim Jarmusch was a wannabe--is it David Lynch with hidden Antonioni aspirations or is that giving him too much credit? There were also a few Almodovarian touches or was that just Spain? (Why is everyone making films in Spain these days? Tax breaks I guess.) I was not bored, like I was watching The Single Man, I just kept waiting for the movie to stop being pseudo, to actually make me laugh or feel clever or sad but it never did. By the end of the movie, whatever was initially at all intriguing had long ago become wrung hopelessly dry with the endless repetitions of phrases, symbols, and images which were then parched some more but never enough to become crushing or, gasp, meaningful. Anyway, Jarmusch knows how to choose his actors, I'll give him that. Isaac de Bankole was fabulous to watch as was Tilda Swinton et al so the film wasn't a total loss, although Bill Murray as some kind of Dick Cheney was completely thrown away.

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