Jim Jarmusch
1) Jarmusch is a minimalist filmmaker who began working in the early 1980s
out of New York City.
2) He received widespread attention for his 1984 film Stranger Than Paradise,
which was made on a budget of somewhere between $100,000 and $125,000.
3)The film consists of a series of B&W single long takes and observes
the seemingly boring stretches of life that we may not see immediate value in.
4) Jarmusch investigates the moments between human beings and concentrates
on the subtleties of language, tone, and gesture.
5) Very little seems to take place in most of his films, but that is the point of his aesthetic style.
6) He avoids extensive editing in scenes to dramatize events.
7) He lets scenes play out in real time and offers a different approach
to storytelling than Lucas and Spielberg.
8)Lastly, popular music is a very important component of Jarmusch’s work.
9)He has worked with several musicians in his films including Joe Strummer, John Lurie, Tom
Waits, and Neil Young.
Critic Geoff Andrew recounts the stylistic history of Stranger Than Paradise:
"At the time of its release, in 1984, what seemed remarkable about the film was that it managed to do so many new and unusual things yet still seem utterly coherent and accessible. For starters, there was its eccentric approach to narrative structure: the sixty-seven single-shot “scenes” separated by black film, and the explicit division of the story into three clear, ironically titled chapters. But there were other formal qualities of note: Tom DiCillo’s black-and-white camera work, which serves Jarmusch’s sensitive feel for the American landscape so well that one recalls Antonioni’s work in Italy or Angelopoulos’s in Greece; and the striking use of music, which successfully juxtaposes Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’s “I Put a Spell on You” with the Bartók-like strains of John Lurie’s score for string quartet. This was a road movie for sure, but one with a difference: unlike most examples of that then still extremely popular genre, Stranger Than Paradise seemed at once wholly American and oddly European.
It was not just that its characters were to some extent “strangers in a strange land”; you could also imagine their creator echoing a famous line—“I’m a stranger here myself”—spoken by the titular hero of Johnny Guitar (1954), a film made by Nick Ray, a mentor of Jarmusch’s. This peculiarly illuminating combination of engagement and distance may be found in the film’s affectionately ironic take on Willie’s cool posturing; in its droll attitude toward some of the absurdities of American culture (the TV dinners alluded to in J. Hoberman’s spot-on review are just one delicious example of Jarmusch’s deadpan wit); and in the way it inflects a very American genre and very American story (if a narrative as dramatically slight and as devoted to “dead moments” may be called a story) with all manner of un-Hollywood stylings. The visuals, pacing, performances, and generally melancholy mood bring to mind not Easy Rider (1969), or even the relatively arty Five Easy Pieces (1970), but Warholesque minimalism, Ozu, Dreyer, Bresson, Antonioni, Wenders. Jarmusch is a cinephile—Eddie is even tempted to bet on a horse called Tokyo Story—and a poet, unafraid of admitting to an interest in “high” art.
In the following clip, Eva (Ester Balint) and Willie (John Lurie) watch football. Notice the stationary camera as it captures the mundane moments of day and night.
Stranger Than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch, 1984):
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