Jim Jarmusch’s new film The Limits of Control is an adulterated director’s film and, subsequently, a curate’s egg. But, by God, it’s a beautiful egg. One wonders, in fact, how the hell the movie would have turned out if the director of photography wasn’t the acclaimed Christopher Doyle.
The film is as tricksy and meandering as anything Jarmusch has ever done. Isaach De Bankolé plays the otherwise unnamed ‘Lone Man’, a walking enigma on a mission in modern-day Spain. It’s not clear what his mission is, or what exactly his meetings (in various locations, including Madrid, Seville, on a train and in the countryside) actually mean. The attendees are invariably starry, such as Tilda Swinton, John Hurt and Gael Garcia Bernal, all in various stages of ‘kookiness’. A typical rendezvous consists of swapping matchboxes, which tend to contain small notes inscribed with hand written messages. All messages are written in a mysterious code, made up of letters, numbers and symbols. During the journey he is tempted by sex, guns and mobile phones, but refuses all, in order to complete his job. His only indulgence is his repeated visits to an art gallery. It’s all very mysterious.
So mysterious, that for a pretty bulky film (it runs at a shade under two hours), there’s not a lot in it. There are repetitions, inversions, echoes and motifs which stretch across its length (much-repeated phrases and actions, the unfathomable use of the same incidental music numerous times). Its episodic narrative is akin to something from a Kakfa novel (where nothing is explicitly explained, it just happens, with these off-kilter ‘happenings’ straddling the line between the wry and the uncomfortable). The star names appear for only a couple of minutes each. Tilda Swinton probably makes the biggest impression, not least because of her unusual attire and character’s rather vocal penchant for old films.
And due to all this self-consciousness and repetition, it’s a slow, difficult watch. Even Jarmusch’s most ardent fans will probably find longeurs. The pill is considerably sweetened by the cinematography, which is crisp, colourful and precise. There’s some lovely images throughout, edited together beautifully. The use of cutting between objects and places featuring opposing geometric images is fun and playful; and also akin to something from an Eisenstein movie. This is one of the points where the lack of character development or a traditional narrative works wonders; the film’s intrinsic bagginess allows extended moments of this visual riffing. That said, the movie is still far too long.
That just leaves the question of what the film is actually about. Is it just an exercise in style and form? Or is the journey metaphor in the film (it begins in an airport, involves lots of waiting and ends with a trip in a car) of any significance? Certainly, the film begins with a philosophical quotation and continues in a chin-stroking vein, with much cod-intellectualizing throughout. Unfortunately Jarmusch’s wry crown does slip several times, and the movie falters and stalls into juvenile, ‘far-out’ existential discussions. All this leads you to wander indeed what, if anything, he is trying to say and, to some extent, what the point of it is.
The Limits of Control is a cool, glacial film full of intrigue and visual beauty. Ultimately it’s too detached and self-conscious to be anything else than an interesting experiment, and it’s certainly not a piece that stands up to Jarmusch’s best work.
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