The Limits of Control

Dir: Jim Jarmusch

2009

*****

I thought Jim Jarmusch’s 2009 film The Limits of Control represented an exciting new direction for the iconic director but many people disagreed. I heard many fellow cinephiles suggest that Jarmusch didn’t put enough effort into it, which I totally disagree with. I believe The Limits of Control is part love letter to classics of old and a journey through the things that make Jarmusch tick. Every film he has made has him in it and what he loves most at the time. It looks like something you’d find in a glossy magazine at times and the scenery and architecture featured is beautiful but I would argue that it is far more than just a good looking film. It’s a neo-noir, a classic black and white but contemporary and in full colour. It features an impressive mixed cast – which is now expected of a Jarmusch film - with some particularly special performances. Jarmusch doesn’t just include cameos for the sake of it. The writing is subtle in places and like having your face smashed in with a poignancy hammer the rest of the time – I could say that much of the film is open to interpretation but I don’t think that is the case, I think a lot of it is just personal to Jarmusch and everyone is welcome to join him. Some of the locations should have had billings of their own, it is a visually rich and beautiful film. The film never feels quite what it is as we follow a lone wolf assassin carrying out a job in sunny Spain. In an airport, our Lone Man (Isaach de Bankolé) is being instructed on his mission by Creole (Alex Descas). The mission itself is left unstated and the instructions are cryptic, including such phrases as "Everything is subjective," "The universe has no center and no edges; reality is arbitrary," and "Use your imagination and your skills." After the meeting in the airport he travels to Madrid and then on to Seville, meeting several people in cafés and on trains along the way (a Jarmusch signature move). Each meeting has the same pattern: he orders two espressos at a cafe and waits, his contact arrives and in Spanish asks, "You don't speak Spanish, right?" in different ways, to which he responds, "No." The contacts tell him about their individual interests such as molecules, art, or film (allowing Jarmusch to pay tribute to friend Aki Kaurismäki and hero Andrei Tarkovsky, then the two of them exchange matchboxes. A code written on a small piece of paper is inside each matchbox, which Lone Man reads and then eats. These coded messages lead him to his next rendezvous. He repeatedly encounters a woman (Paz de la Huerta) who is always either completely nude or wearing only a transparent raincoat. She invites him to have sex with her but he declines, stating that he never has sex while he is working. These scenes are about as sensual as it gets. One phrase that Creole, the man in the airport tells him is repeated throughout the movie: "He who thinks he is bigger than the rest must go to the cemetery. There he will see what life really is: a handful of dirt." This phrase is sung in a flamenco song in a club in Seville at one point in his journey. In Almería, he is given a ride in a pickup truck - driven by a companion of the Mexican (Gael García Bernal) - on which the words La vida no vale nada ('life is worth nothing') are painted, a phrase Guitar (John Hurt) says to him in Seville, and he is taken to Tabernas desert. There lies a fortified and heavily guarded compound. After observing the compound from afar, he somehow penetrates its defenses and waits for his target inside the target's office. The target (Bill Murray) asks how he got in, and he answers, "I used my imagination." After the murder with a guitar string, he rides back to Madrid, where he locks away the suit he has worn throughout the movie and changes into a sweatsuit bearing the national flag of Cameroon. Before exiting the train station onto a crowded sidewalk he throws away his last matchbox. I think there is a lot going on here but essentially this is a journey through cinema, albeit a very personal one to Jarmusch. If it was explained or released as part of a celebration of film festival then people would be praising it from the roof-tops but that wasn’t the case. I struggle to think of another film that contains so much attention to detail or one that looks as good 100% of the time. It may never be seen as a classic but as a passionate lover of film I regard it as a treat, a go to film when I really need a cinematic pick-me-up and some visual inspiration.