The Limits of Control

Why Jim Jarmush? Why? Why did you of all directors have to produce such a dud? Why couldn't you have passed on that burden to a director without your prowess or your imagination? I thought we had a good thing going here. You make awesome movies and I watch them. It's a virtually flawless system. But no. You had to go and make The Limits of Control, a painfully pointless and stagnant film with no plot, no purpose, and no emotion. It follows a lone man as he searches for... something. There's no telling what, as the film has no backstory. It really has no story for that matter. This nameless man travels Europe, meeting various people and having vague conversations about nothing with them, only to receive a matchbox with a piece of paper in it at the end of every conversation. The man then proceeds to eat the paper. Any synopsis I could write about this film will make no sense and, unfortunately, seeing the film won't clear anything up.

This is such an utterly pointless film. It is incredibly experimental to a Lynchian degree, but Lynch always wraps up his films with a point. His films have a sense of purpose and meaning, and they get somewhere. The Limits of Control does not. We begin and end the film equally confused as to what is going on at all. The film does have a intriguing auteur look to it, accompanied by a great soundtrack and overall eerie pacing. But these nice things can only care a plot less story so far. The visual quality of the film begins as something compelling to look at and to absorb, but slowly becomes a very boring excuse for art film style visuals.

I think what really irks me about this film is just how serious it takes itself, and how profound it thinks it is. The film is incredibly pretentious and every conversation and every long, drawn-out, pointless scene is more self-indulgent that the previous. The film wants you to believe that there is some greater meaning to what it is all saying, but it's all just the ramblings of a pretentious goof. This is a film that insults our intelligence, as it isn't difficult to see past the faux profundities to the self-important nonsense that this film really is.

And what's even worse is how much the film tries to lead you on. It is alright to begin a film with no real backstory, throwing us right in the middle of the action. The Ancient Greeks invented the idea in the first place calling it in medias res, so I have no opposition to that. What I'm not okay with is films that just go in circles, never resolving anything and never filling us in on necessary backstory, or helping us out with the story at all for that matter. This isn't a thinking film in which we have to decipher the clues we are given by the characters and the story. There are no clues and this is a completely braindead film that thinks it has a brain that is smarter than all of us. Well, it's wrong. It's not intelligent, just pretentious.

I think the one place I can find solace in my despair over how bad this film was is that it doesn't give the impression that Jim Jarmush has forgotten how to make movies. That is a thought I reserve for films that are just bad in every way. The Limits of Control is Jarmush trying something different and new, but just failing miserably. It's really no more than a failed experiment, and I hope Jarmush realizes this. I hope he doesn't feel like he succeeded in making The Limits of Control a progressive and compelling film that transcends all cinematic boundaries. I hope that he has enough sense to realize he dropped a stinking pretentious mess on us and that he will have to clean it up if he wants to gain back some respect.

An abstract reflection on power and its transience. A risky film by Jim Jarmusch which, despite having stars in secondary roles, having the exoticism of being filmed in Spain and having many of the qualities to which this irreverent North American independent filmmaker has accustomed us, ends up leaving a slight bitter taste in the mouth.

Deep down because Jarmusch stripped the film of everything superfluous, summarizing it as a bare course, without a classic plot beyond the essential message. Life is short and all power is vain and transitory. A simple journey whose destination is discovered at each stop.

I'm not going to waste anyone's time with subjective yammering, whether it be positive ("a cinematic tour de force!") or negative ("pretentious artsy fluff!") because, let's face it, those comments don't mean squat to anyone but the person saying it.

Instead, just rifle through this list of movies and if you liked any of them, you'll probably like this movie.

"Tetro" (director Francis Ford Coppola, 2009), "Broken Flowers" (director Jim Jarmusch, 2005), "Before It Had a Name" (director Giada Colagrande, 2005), "A Scene at the Sea" (director Takeshi Kitano, 1991), "Der Himmel über Berlin" a.k.a. "Wings of Desire" (director Wim Wenders, 1987), "Paris, Texas" (director Wim Wenders, 1984).

If you haven't heard of, or seen, any of those then just bear in mind that "Limits of Control", like the movies mentioned above, is very slow, almost uneventful, without a lot of revealing dialogue to carry the story. These stories are told in images, and it can be a real challenge keeping up, not because there are a lot of crazy twists and turns, but because there's almost nothing. I could sum up the plot of this movie in 8 words: "a day in the life of a hit-man". But if you're up for a challenge, give it a shot.

I really enjoy some of Jim Jarmusch's work (Night on Earth, Mystery Train and Dead Man), and I thought that I would like this film based on the story (or lack thereof) and the soundtrack, however, I was quite disappointed. The film is very slow, and while this can work and be beneficial to the plot, I think that it dragged on far too long in this instance. There was a lot going on visually, which made up for the slowness to a degree, but it seemed as if there was too much time to take it all in. I felt myself noticing the same things over and over in various shots/scenes, because there wasn't anything else to do besides look, which made me feel like I was staring at the film more so than actually watching it.

As for the soundtrack, I am a fan of some of the artists on it (Boris, Sunn, Earth, etc.), which is part of the reason I wanted to see this film initially. Because these bands can have a very slow, droney sound, I was very interested to see how the mood of the music would work with the tone of the film. I expected the two to compliment each other, but instead, the soundtrack just made everything drag on. Because the film progressed as such a slow pace, I assumed that it was leading up to a grand climax, but the film's culmination barely stood out.

I will say that I admired the film from a technical aspect, and I enjoyed seeing some familiar faces from Jarmusch's earlier work, but I don't think I'll ever watch it again.

I guess for Jim Jarmusch, the shot, not the characters or the narrative is the building block and center of the film. Each shot is almost a minor Magritte painting with some detail incongruous enough to make us chuckle or wonder WTF. Why does the lead character order two cups of espresso? Why does the character wear those too tight shiny suits? What is the meaning of the constant exchanging of match boxes? This movie could be called "Match boxes and coffee" instead of "Cigarettes and Coffee," an even slower movie Jarmusch. The narrative is without excitement or tension. For a brief moment I had hoped that Jarmusch would pick up the pace when the hero saw the armed camp/complex. I thought the hero would race down and shoot ten or twenty men and jump out of the way of army jeeps and bound over walls to get inside. Nope, not this movie. Jarmusch just has the character appear inside the complex in the next scene and mysteriously hint at the way he got in. The movie does pick up in about five or six scenes with Paz De La Huerta. She is just called Nude and she appears in a series of what seems like nude poses. It is quite erotic and does make the first half of the picture move entertaining. There is also a nice dialogue scene about Orson Welles "Lady from Shanghai." These are the highlights of the film for me ten minutes watching Paz De La Huerta act without clothes, a discussion of "Lady from Shanghai" and those too tight shiny suits. Amusing, but too laid back.