Limited Control

Posted on The Independent Film Channel:

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Jim Jarmusch Pushes the "Limits"

by Aaron Hillis

As filmmaker Jim Jarmusch sits down for our conversation, he pulls out a small notebook filled with what looks like quickly jotted-down ideas during his travels. When I ask about it, he jokes with the same deadpan wit that his movies are known for that they're his answers to my questions. He then segues to his musician friend and hipster icon Tom Waits, who apparently kept a similar notebook full of topics he wanted to remember to discuss while being interviewed: "So, regardless of the question, he'd say: 'Do you know there are albino moles living under Las Vegas?'" Since his rise from early '80s Lower East Side breakout to world-renowned auteur, Jarmusch is still one of the coolest people living in New York.

Also effortlessly chic is "The Limits of Control," Jarmusch's first film since 2005's "Broken Flowers," in which a sharkskin-suited Isaach De Bankolé stars as an enigmatic, meticulous criminal on an unknown assignment in picturesque Spain. Shot for shot the most gorgeous film of the year thus far (thanks to cinematographer extraordinaire Christopher Doyle), the film is an impressionistic, minimalist art-thriller... but maybe that's not accurate. The two-espresso-drinking De Bankolé sits in cafés, visits museums, walks around and encounters a bizarre series of contacts (Tilda Swinton, Gael García Bernal, John Hurt) on the way to completing some mission involving Bill Murray's patronizing businessman. It's a viewing experience that's mysterious and fulfilling, cerebral but open to analysis. Jarmusch and I certainly analyzed the film a bit, while occasionally discussing William Burroughs and French poetry, Dick Cheney and naked women. If you're confused by Jarmusch's references to "he," by the way, that would be De Bankolé's nameless "Lone Man."

After reading "The Limits of Control," the William Burroughs essay with the same title, the only direct correlation I could come up with was that you frequently have characters who interact with one another through language barriers.

The Burroughs essay isn't all that pertinent to the film, although it concerns language as a control mechanism, a very powerful one. But really, I was just lifting the title because I liked it. The essay is interesting, although somewhat out of date due to the web. The way information is disseminated now is quite different than 1975 or whenever he wrote that. More importantly from Burroughs to me are his investigations into coincidence, the cut-up method and using the I Ching. Those things were very important in how this film was created. The essay itself is less directly relevant than some [other] ideas of Burroughs'.

What made me think there was more to it was the end credits, which close with "No Limit. No Control." That was the only reason I took another peek at Burroughs' essay.

Well, it's in there. But this film has an incredible amount of references to other things that are not essential to understanding. I didn't want to make a film that was mentally taxing. I wanted it to be, not an exercise, but a trip for the audience to be sucked along by, and hopefully be entertaining on some level. The film was structured [so that audiences] accept things as we went along and look for connective layers that would present themselves if you're open to them.

I don't know if you know this French school of poetry called Oulipo. Raymond Queneau used a lot of game structures, puzzling things together that are seemingly not connected but then become connected by juxtaposition. Burroughs made a series of incredibly beautiful scrapbooks where he would take things out of the newspaper. He'd find things on the same page that were seemingly unrelated, and yet he'd find something else that connected them. I like Brian Eno's little Oblique Strategies cards. All those things were inspirations on to construct a film as you go, to some extent. I had all the scenes sketched out, but I hadn't written the dialogue. We were very open as we went. That makes no sense at all now. [laughs]

No, it does. I was enthralled with the film's peculiar sense of logic. It has these delightful red herrings, and an elliptical sense of both dialogue and imagery that seems just out of reach of concrete meaning. It's a very human trait to search for patterns in these kinds of elements.

Yeah, and to me, one of the strongest forms of human expression has always been variations on things. The film embraces that, too. A lot of the situations keep repeating, but they're varied by the place or the person he's meeting with, or where he's waiting. It's just a series of variations, which is in classical music, pop music, fashion, architecture, literature and painting.

At the press screening I attended, a woman behind me kept sighing. I think she was expecting something more to happen, and I wanted to turn around and say, "You're watching it." In a film that's clearly about the moment-to-moment experience but still about the puzzle, how do you strike a balance between giving and withholding?

In this case, one key is the first painting that he goes and looks at, a Cubist painting of a violin by Juan Gris. The film, although not visually referential to Cubism in any other way, is kind of cubistic philosophically or structurally, in that you can look at scenes differently, details differently, details from different perspectives that are all equally valid. The film doesn't tell you how to interpret anything, really. That was the intention, which I understand -- for some people, like that lady -- might be frustrating because it's an action movie with no action. That's contradictory and frustrating if you're expecting conventional action, but we're referencing crime films and action movies in small ways... my big Michael Bay helicopter descending shot, you know? There is no real convention that satisfies those things, although the ending is kind of a convention because he [has to] complete his mission. But even that, what does it mean? It's amusing to me to hear that people have interpreted some things that I didn't even think of.

Talking with a colleague after the screening, we concurred that the film could be an elaborate Dick Cheney revenge fantasy. Bill Murray's villainous character even calls for someone named Addington.

[laughs] You're the first person I've talked to who's even noticed that. There's a layer of that in there, but the end is also purely metaphorical in that expression and imagination strangles conventional power of money and control. The end is, in a way, a convention that's not so important or interesting. I don't know, it's so hard for me to see the film. This's the case with any film that you spend two years making. You want people to see it for the first time, but I can never see it for the first time. It's impossible. It's a strange dilemma. The film's certainly constructed, to a large degree, in the editing. In the shooting, scenes were kind of modular, like when he's waiting in certain apartments. We tried to put them in different orders in the editing and found the musical rhythm of the storyline.

How much more footage is there?

There are a few extra scenes with Paz de la Huerta, the naked girl, that are not in the film. They were good scenes, but the rhythm didn't really need them. But those are really the only things removed. There was a theme in the film that we shot of these men in black that keep hovering around, like when he was in the train station. You see them in the airport in the beginning, briefly, but there were more of them throughout. Frankly, it felt heavy-handed and the actors weren't real great -- or maybe the directing of them wasn't, I don't want to blame them. It wasn't really happening, so those got removed. But that's about it.

Logistically, it seems like the most expansive film you've yet made.

I think "Dead Man" was more expansive. We traipsed across five states with horses and period wardrobe and had to shoot in places where you couldn't see a road or a telephone pole. That one was a little more complicated in that way. But this was kind of rushed, how we shot. Maybe that gave us something, I don't know. [laughs] It gave us a lot of anxiety and tension while shooting, which I generally don't like to have on the set, but it was kind of unavoidable due to the schedule. We were a little frazzled.

But you always seem so cool and collected. Maybe you hide it well.

I think I internalize it, but generally, I try to keep things calm, a little bit funny, and not take myself too seriously. With this film, a lot of that evaporated due to the pressure. That's kind of a drag.

I named the characters in the credits like paintings, "Lone Man," "Nude," "Blonde," "Violin," "Guitar," you know? I don't know how that answers the question, but [de la Huerta] just assumed that nude character, vulnerable but sort of a femme fatale. It doesn't quite pay off since there's obviously not a sexual thing happening, to her frustration, and her wanting to be more manipulative of him, but she's still mysterious, too -- to me, as well. I don't really know where that comes from. I have a film that I have notes and sketches on that I don't know when I'll make that is highly sexual, a love story of two young characters that fuck all the time. I've never really addressed that in a film. At some point, I'd like to.

In this film, I had an initial inspiration in my head: I still read a lot of crime fiction, but I used to devour it, and I read all the books a long time ago by Richard Stark, which is [the pseudonym for] Donald Westlake. This character he has, Parker, when he's on these criminal missions, usually heists and stuff, is always totally focused. He cannot be distracted by girls, parties, alcohol -- nothing. So that focus was part of the thing I had in my head for a long time, wanting to make a film with Isaach De Bankolé as a character like that, very controlled. Not distracted by sex came from those Parker books, which "Point Blank" is based on.

You named this film's production company after that film, as I saw in the opening credits.

Yeah, I love that film. We weren't trying to imitate it, but we were using it for inspiration because, to me, every camera angle in "Point Blank" is stunning. We watched it, Chris Doyle, [production designer] Eugenio Caballero and I, then we talked about the things we were struck by. We weren't trying to replicate them. It's a lone guy on a mission, but he's angry and out for revenge, so we drained all that from this story. Again, draining the action from an action film, what were we thinking?

Here's a question I've wanted to ask you for at least 15 years: how do you get your hair to stick up so cool?

I have a procedure [that I've been doing] for 20 years. I brush my hair back, and after I take a shower, I wear a wool hat for five minutes every day. When I take it off, I just take a towel and my hair just goes in position. I think it's been trained. It's the best way. I use a little hair grease sometimes, which Joe Strummer turned me on to. It's called "Black & White" and smells like coconuts. All those rockabilly and ska guys in England always used this stuff for their quiffs. Joe gave me a thing of that in, like, 1982 or something. I still have a lot that I've had for 10 years, so it's still good.