Stranger Than Paradise
d. Jim Jarmusch, 1984
Perhaps more than any film of the 1980s, Jim Jarmusch's breakthrough film Stranger Than Paradise has everything that I instinctively love about movies. It has grainy, black-and-white compositions, all of the scenes are made up of one shot, there aren't a lot of characters in the film, and, above all, the story takes a back seat to character.
Stranger Than Paradise, Jarmusch's first non-student film, pretty much laid down the basic formula for his next couple of projects. It wasn't until 1995's Dead Man that he would depart from the Cassavetes meets Warhol New York hipster type of mentality (which I love). And this is the definitive film of that period in his career.
It tells the "story" of hipster Willie (John Lurie, who did the music for the film), who spends most of his time in his apartment watching tv or making money gambling or at the tracks with his friend Eddie (Richard Edson). At the beginning of the film, Willie receives the news that his Hungarian cousin Eva (Eszter Balint) will be visiting him for a week before she leaves for Ohio. At first, they don't really get along, and Jarmusch shoots their distant relationship in unforgettable single-shot scenes in which, for the most part, the camera doesn't move.
When it finally comes time for Eva to leave, Willie has become attached to her but is too cool to admit it. A couple of days later, after winning a lot of money from a game of cards, Willie and Eddie decide to take a roadtrip to Ohio and visit Eva and Willie's aunt Lotte (Cecillia Stark). The scenes set in Ohio are just as captivating as the ones in New York, and the key line of the film comes when Eddie looks around the snow in Ohio and says, "you know, it's funny, you come someplace new, and everything looks the same."
Soon enough they get tired of Ohio and, for some reason or another, decided to go to Florida. They take Eva with them, and this concluding passage of the film is at once the best and most problematic (mostly due to story contrivances which don't really matter). Though the conclusion of Stranger Than Paradise is quite depressing, there was no better way for Jarmusch to end his beautifully melancholy film.
