Tuesday 3 May 2011

Jim Jarmusch Films - A Balancing Act


“Anyone who makes a film that is the film they want to make, and it is not defined by marketing analysis or a commercial enterprise, is independent. My movies are kind of made by hand. They're not polished -- they're sort of built in the garage. It's more like being an artisan in some way.” - Jim Jarmusch on his apparent ‘independent’ films.

What a guy, what a vision; this sounds plain when one has witnessed the pure ‘artisan’ quality of a Jim Jarmusch film. I would prefer writing about the art of his films for almost ‘forever’. Yet I have to be content to simply summarize the genius of his filming into a focused statement: the perfection inherent in Jim Jarmusch’s films rely on the subtle yet all encompassing balance between the elements in a film; the setting, the characters, the story and the cinematography, all equally ‘perfect’, ‘need’ each other in order to convey the such intensity as the finished works currently display.
The only thing I’ll allow myself to include about Jarmusch’s mastery is his filmography, for those who dares to witness pure equilibrium. So, watch Permanent Vacation (1980), Stranger than Paradise (1984), Down by Law (1986), Mystery Train (1989), Night on Earth (1991), Dead Man (1995), Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999), Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), Broken Flowers (2005) and The Limits of Control (2009).

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