Thursday 30 January 2020

The Limits of Control (2009)


Director: Jim Jarmusch
Screenplay: Jim Jarmusch
Cast: Isaach de Bankolé as Lone Man; Bill Murray as American; Tilda Swinton as Blonde; Gael García Bernal as Mexican; Hiam Abbass as Driver; Paz de la Huerta as Nude; Alex Descas as Creole; John Hurt as Guitar; Youki Kudoh as Molecules; Jean-François Stévenin as French; Óscar Jaenada as The Waiter; Luis Tosar as Violin

For today, we have what is regarded as Jim Jarmusch's less regarded film. Openly, on the offset, I have come to love The Limits of Control initially in mind that, in lieu to a career of mainly dialogue heavy films, and with his debut Permanent Vacations (1980) the weakest I have seen, the reputation of the film comes as much from how boldly he stepped out of his comfort zone rather than whether it was an artistic disaster or not. The tone is one you have to appreciate immediately or the film will not work. Tonally, the choice to score the film to drone metal is the perfect symbol of what Jarmusch's last 2000s film really is, a stretching of simple factors as furthest as possible in slow prolonged riffs which build. To watch The Limits of Control is the director-writer stretching his obsessions and a crime story to their extreme minimalism.

Here he has an assassin story, told with clear nods to the European film traditions of existential qualities, but also as an incredibly minimal series of vignettes building from his habit of acquiring very distinct casts just to have walk-on cameos. It is an experimental risk that would divide even his fans inherently. What the plot is turns out to be very simple and easy to grasp if plotted out - Jarmusch regular Isaach de Bankolé is sent out on a contract to kill an American politician, but the film itself is about the journey, following various different figures exchanging matchboxes to the next person, all of which end up on conversations about everything from movies to even the potential scientific uses of molecule research.

It's droll, esoteric and would be immediately accused of pretentious; here is a world of assassins where Tilda Swinton is a silver wig and cowboy hat can go into a conversation about The Lady of Shanghai (1947) not making sense. Where it all makes sense for me is that the hectic (possible) reality of hired killers is clearly not what we have as is usually depicted but something else. In complete honesty, the only aspect that feels absurd for me is that actress Paz de la Huerta spends most of the film entirely nude or in a transparent raincoat only, probably in the only moment of Jarmusch's career he ever seemingly, for better or worse, had a boner in his art. Aside from this, this is still a playful Jarmusch film, the slow pace not as extreme as even how drastically glacial Gus Van Sant's films became in the 2000s, to compare to another American indie auteur, but is instead leisured and zen like.

Even the dialogue is not that surprising when, in Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), two vampires can talk of underground bands, his cinematography a catalogue of long and lengthy tangents that were always of a sign of Jarmusch being a proto-hipster. The difference between him and Quentin Tarantino was always his sense of a warmer humanity rather than an overt archness, and this applies to The Limits of Control as, for all its languid moments and tangents, the dialogue does has sparks of amusement or a willingness to raise an eyebrow at itself when characters start bringing up quotations.


Helping considerably is the cast, Bankolé a magnetic prescience who spend the film almost entirely mute, his rituals like ordering two cups of espresso at once given a light conviction to them without being heavy handed quirks. Beyond him, Jarmusch has since the start of his career always attached himself to idiosyncratic actors. de la Huerta, despite spending the film mostly nude, a blunt literalisation of a femme fatale that is played for clear humour1; Tilda Swinton, who'd work with Jarmusch onwards from this film; John Hurt, in a nice cameo talking about the real bohemians; a returning Youki Kudoh, from Mystery Train (1989); and many more. At whatever point, likely Mystery Train as it was a three part anthology, Jarmusch became obsessed with even casting minor one scene roles with distinct faces, character actors, even non-actors like Screaming Jay Hawkins. Whether it succeeds or not each time, it does at least mean you care about the side characters, as he always cast good actors who can make dialogue like here credible or have figures that stand out.

Notably as well, in terms of casting, he had the legendary cinematographer Christopher Doyle on this production, and set in Madrid the result is sumptuous, contrary to its plot for a clear deliberateness. Large portions of the film are devoted to Bankolé's hit man waiting (from visiting an art gallery to sitting at cafes) which doe add to the entirely deliberated neutered tone that likely irritated many; I fell in love with this because, not only is it clearly going for a meditative state, but Doyle's work is gorgeous here, one of his less overtly colourful or heightened productions, but with a sense of style that is rich.

Of course, the score as mentioned is drone metal, a genre I am fond of, compiled of many legends of the sub-genre such as Earth, the pioneers of it, to the likes of Boris and Sunn O)). Drone metal, in which a single riff can be purposely slowed and extended out for minutes, has found itself in the curious place where it is appreciated by non-metal fans, once described as being "raga played in an earthquake"2. It is one of the most extremely experimental genres because of it minimalistic, a genre that certainly adds atmosphere as it emphasises the slowness contemplative state of the world we see onscreen.

Tonally the film has a repetitious nature which adds to the material, haziness from the phrase used to indicate each person Bankolé has to meet, "Do you speak Spanish?", to the motif phrase of a proud man being recommended to visit a graveyard to realise where humanity is. The sense of ominousness, the motif of death, does grow on a rewatch, felt for me now similar to Dead Man (1995) which was scored to a noisy rock instrumental score from Neil Young. A sense for all the humour and clear delight is still to be had in the references to classical art, but the existential nature of the film does play off this sense of mortality. Likelihood is that Bankolé could easily represent the Angel of Death on interpretation. It doesn't detract from the pleasures to be had, as this is a film where a guitar string literalises the weaponisation of art, but it feels sombre as much indebted to its influences as it is Jarmusch's own work.

The result, in its lack of a lot of dialogue or a full plot, turns into being a shifting experience, one that is fully experienced instead of exposited. The result is, controversially, becoming one of my favourite of the director's films as it's a one-off, a work that I came to with lowered expectations and a decade plus wait, only to grow into this magnificently atmospheric and powerful piece.

Abstract Spectrum: Atmospheric/Minimalist
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium


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1) Its fascinating to think, in how I remember this period, that Paz de la Huerta was almost being held up as being a new voice after her appearance in Gaspar Noe's Enter the Void (2009), a name of interest in casting only for her to disappear in the early 2010s. Obviously the real tale in more than this, with roles before and a career of performances into the 2010s, but the casting here the same year always had a sense of weird synchronicity that never lead to anything else.

2) A reference to this article on the sub-gebre. 

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