Jim Jarmusch, Dir. (2009).
The film opens with classic Marc Auge non-places: office cubicle, long conversation in an airport gate, controls of ticket check and long blank corridor before boarding a small plane. Isaac de Banchole plays the lone man, unnamed and meeting two associates at the airport. One speaks only Spanish, without subtitles. The other translates into English. The grain of the Spanish speakers’ voice is important. We focus entirely on how he says things.
The trip in to Madrid from the airport is familiar from my trip there last autumn, the slight dreamlike haze of such journeys from airports through the most nondescript hinterlands towards the city itself always has that effect, even on a shorter haul flight.
Arrival at the hotel (or apartment) is certainly not a non-place. It is a peculiar design, idiosyncratic with flashes of colour, bold geometry and strange materiality. The room is strange, oddly shaped and furnished, not reflective of the circular exterior, drum upon drum, but with a mixture of ramshackle 1950s furniture. The palette is carefully constructed, the room has frosted glass and contrasting green & red tones, layering very much a feature of the great Christopher Doyle’s cinematography. Clarity of shot is optional, and frequently inappropriate. The camera does not need to move, can cut mid glance, and linger on an impassive face.
I approve of his coffee habit. Perhaps there is an essay in this – I am reminded of The Guard with Don Cheedle’s habit of placing sugar; and of course Jarmusch’s own Coffee and Cigarettes.
The specificity of his demand defines the character: two espressos in separate cups. Coupled with his language difficulties, this underlines the interaction in a simple cafe: the frustration of the wrong order, the oddness of his demand and the insistent nature of his order. He needs them now. He breaks the social contract of the cafe a little, but is in control of the situation – going so far as to place the wrong double espresso back on the waiter’s platter. He is clearly delighted when he returns, and the correct coffee is ordered more swiftly. Even more so when Tilda Swinton turns up, tries to drink his second coffee, and is set right by the waiter. The Lone Man establishes his rules, the cafe conforms to him.
This is the Lone Man’s power in the film, to push his surroundings into conforming to him. In small, but significant ways, he demonstrates his presence in the environment through the repeated coffee ritual, regardless of his context: plane, cafe, train.
Starkness and strangeness is played up. The Reina Sofia museum with its flashes of red and consultation of the plan seem to speak of his specificity. The Lone Man knows which cubist painting he wants to see, and he studies it carefully. He is directed there by his codes, later taking in a nude, carefully disposing of the paper by eating it and washing it down with his coffee.
The girl who frequents the room appears to represent conscience, and the city: the lone man resists it’s / her temptations whilst flitting from scene to scene, dingy bar to slick club.
The train conversation is hypnotic, as though a dreamt half remembered conversation takes us to Seville rather than a form of transportation.
The room here is traditional, fabric, tiles, somewhat institutional in character, the tones are paler, the lighting softer.
Establishing shots rarely implicate the character so much. Here the lone man walks, glancing, eyes flicking upwards and sideways. He is unavoidably present, utterly lacking in stealth: much like the incidents with the coffee, he is always fully present in a scene. His agency is clear, like the camera that makes its presence felt, but which attempts to erase itself in classic Hollywood filmmaking.
The film is a travelogue, smuggled under the guise of a vague criminal conspiracy that is happening. The chance encounters, strange surroundings, and jump cuts emulate the likes of Marker’s Sans Soleil: but with a dramatic narrative. Other characters walk with a different purpose and sense of urgency: when John Hurt’s character makes his arrival, he uses the city in a different way.
The encounters are formulaic.
Do you speak Spanish?
Are you interested in films/sex/science/art?
Each character gives a little of their worldview in turn, providing the next clue in the formulaic and playful or even satirical rendering of the plot line. The diegesis, the actual plot, is fed piece by piece, with a small sense of tension rising as to what the job actually is, but it makes a minimal footprint. We have no way of guessing, we are rarely surprised by how the story progresses. The film is performance, setting, props (the subtly shifting hue of the lone man’s suit – changing for each location), atmosphere, and all those other things; but the idea of plot is deliberately subverted or even circumvented. It is like a building without purpose in a way, one which can be inhabited however one likes to.
Gael Garcia Bernal’s Mexican character reinforces the theme of presence: the reflection is more present than everything else. Are you interested in hallucinations?
The isolation of the final hillside compound is stark, contextualised by the journey through scrub and desert to get there: this is no-place. How can one make ones presence felt here, how can one demand the agency so carefully constructed throughout the rest of the film? Even here, temptation follows. Returning to his whitewashed house, white dust sheets on the furniture and paintings, the line man finds the nude once again for a final exchange of matchboxes. He continues the job, performs his exercises one more time surrounded by white drapery.
What feels like a jump cut back to Seville finds the lone man in his target’s office. The line is startling: I used my imagination. I understand subjectively. Reality is arbitrary.
The bohemians, the film makers, musicians, and scientists all contribute to the final act: eliminating the American.
Distracted Attention 