Directed by Jim Jarmusch
Starring John Lurie, Eszter Balint, and Richard Edson
Produced by Cinesthesia Productions
Willie ambles through life in New York City, hustling for money and barely existing in a small non-descript apartment. So he's not pleased when he receives a phone call asking him to house his 16-year old cousin Eva from Hungary. Willie is initially aggressive in his distaste for having to watch out for the young girl, but, over her 10-day stay, he warms up to her. Or at least warms up to her as much as his ego will allow. He buys her a dress that she is clearly not thrilled with. At the end of the stay, Eva heads off to Cleveland to live with her aunt, disposing of the dress as she heads out of town.
A year later, Willie and his best friend Eddie have scored some cash cheating at cards and are looking to get out of town. Soon, they are en route to Cleveland to drop in on Eva and Aunt Lotte. They find Eva working at a hot dog stand and get a brief tour of barren Cleveland landscapes. Willie and Eddie start back for New York, but soon decide to head to Florida instead. So they stop and pick up Eva and head south.
Will the trio's fortunes change in the tropical paradise? Or will life continue to deal them more of the same?
Is it possible for a film to be meditative and funny? Methodical and absurd? In Stranger than Paradise, Jim Jarmusch succeeds in marrying those tones and feelings into a satisfying portrait of both people and America.
The approach he takes is fascinating. For the first half of the film, the story plays out almost solely within Willie's apartment. A pattern repeats itself over and over. We get a scene in one take that gives a sense of his and Eva's existence. It may be what they are eating, or what they are watching on television, or why Willie won't let Eva go someplace with him. Then we fade to black. Pause. Then we open on another scene. The effect provides a sense, not that the film is unspooling a narrative, but that we are dropping in periodically on the lives of these characters.
The loose story itself provides an undercurrent of unsettling humor throughout as opposed to individual jokes. To the extent there's any punch lines, they serve to break the uneasy tension the rest of the film is reveling in. And the approach works.
The film also has some rather obvious things to say about American life that seem relevant today. The crew travels from New York to Cleveland to "paradise" and the underlying joke of the travels is that the country looks the same no matter where you go. More than that, life doesn't change much even when you pick up and move. You can lose all your money betting on horses just as easily in Florida as New York.
The bizarreness of the ending is both a punch in the gut and fits the film perfectly. Eva accidentally falling into money and looking to get away, Willie bumbling into an accidental trip trying to catch up with her, and a dumbfounded Eddie standing in a parking lot observing it all makes sense and comes out of left field.
The actors here are all pretty good. John Lurie's Willie and Richard Edson's Eddie almost look alike which is the point. Lurie can both convey a tough exterior and the eventual cracks in that shell very well. Edson is primarily comic relief and works well. Eszter Balint's Eva is at times too much of a blank slate, but she is supposed to be a cipher in parts so it serves the film well.
Stranger in Paradise has gotten better in my mind's eye over the week since I have seen it. My brain keeps going back to the film, filling in the gaps Jarmusch never shows us and pondering what happens to the characters next. And that kind of ongoing deliberation is the highest compliment I can pay any movie.
***** out of *****
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