I'm hard pressed to figure out what exactly famed director Jim Jarmusch was trying to achieve with his film, The Limits of Control. Part of me thinks it was an excuse to glorify the beautiful Spanish landscape, which if that was the point then he more than succeeded. If the point was to create a dense, impenetrable, narrative-less waking nightmare, then he succeeded. If the point was to test the limits of my patience, not to mention the alertness of me and the rest of the people in the theater I was at, then he succeeded as well.
Control is basically the film equivalent of watching paint dry, even if that paint is multi-colored and full of amazing imagery, you're still doing something extremely dull and unproductive. Ostensibly, this is about a mysterious, cool hitman played by Jarmusch favorite Isaach de Bankole. He has no name, he's referred to in the credits as the Lone Man. Might as well have called him the Quiet Man, as he almost never speaks. He's been given a job in Spain, the details of which are unknown to us and frankly don't matter. The journey is what the film is about, as the Lone Man gathers instructions from an odd assortment of strangely named characters. For instance, there's Paz de la Huerta, aptly named Nude, who just seems to be this amorphous figure who shows up, asks for sex periodically, and then disappears. Or Tilda Swinton as Blonde, dressed up entirely in white and carrying an umbrella for no apparent reason. These people show up, make irritating, obtuse statements that are impossible to give a damn about. Completely unprovoked, mind you. I guess the Lone Man just inspires that sort of openness.
Not that I can see why. Bankole's Lone Man is as dull and lifeless as the movie itself. He drinks two expressos at a time, and don't you dare try to bring him a double. He practices his martial arts form in his hotel room. We see this repeated ad nauseum, to the point where people were openly sighing in disgust at it's overuse. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to anything that happens, nor is there a narrative to draw you in to the story. I confess I managed to only stay awake for about 90% of this thing, but I seriously doubt I missed something crucial in those few minutes I was out. In fact when I woke up they were still sitting in the same spot, with Gael Garcia Bernal still droning on about...something or other. Based off the snores I heard I'm willing to bet I stayed awake a lot longer than some others did. Not even Bill Murray, who drops by for a couple minutes to play the American, some sort of shady businessman, can breathe any life into this rotting corpse.
Jarmusch was one of the icons of the indie movement back in the 80's. His films were truly outside the paramters of the norm, especially his earliest work like Stranger than Paradise and one of my faves, Night on Earth. With the exception of Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai(another fave), his work has become more...aloof, is the word I would use. Broken Flowers, Coffee and Cigarettes, and now Limits, really have no narrative structure and seem more like a random series of conversations. His early stuff had the sense that atleast someone was on a journey of discovery, and was being aided in journey by other strong, opinionated people. Not so anymore. That part has been stripped away, and now we're left with something that's only interesting in the leanest sense of the word. Here's hoping Jarmusch gets back on his game again soon.
2/10
