THE LIMITS OF CONTROL: Two Hours Searching For The End of a Damn Roll of Tape

I must preface this post with a disclaimer.  I have seen exactly four of Jim Jarmusch's eleven feature films: Down by Law, Ghost Dog, Broken Flowers, and this. I have not seen some of his supposed classics--Stranger than Paradise and Dead Man are frequently brought up in his defense when I voice my displeasure with Jarmusch, and I must admit the paucity of my schooling in his work.  As such, I won't write off Jarmusch completely.

Having stated my disclaimer, let me now state the facts--The Limits of Control is a waste of my time.  I'm not saying it outright sucks--Christopher Doyle turns in some consistently beautiful camerawork, and there's a few scenes with a hot naked chick.  I'm saying that, as a whole, it's irrelevant, irritating, self-absorbed, insular, smug, and a total waste of time.  Technically brilliant, visually beautiful, and otherwise made up of the most flat, stale, emotionless two hours of my young life.

The plot in a nutshell--an ascetic, silent hit man (Isaach De Bankolé) travels through Spain wearing a series of tasteful and well-tailored suits, and meets a succession of enigmatic characters outside coffee shops who spout a few arcane lines and hand him a battered matchbox.  In each matchbox is a small scrap of paper displaying a cryptic series of numbers and letters.  He reads and then swallows each scrap.  This continues until he is led to a heavily guarded compound in the Spanish hills, into which he mysteriously breaks in and kills a nefarious government (or something) suit (Bill Murray) for an unexplained crime.  It's good the movie ends there, because I'd quickly exhaust all other synonyms for "mysterious" trying to summarize any more.

Jim, it's not that I don't get it--it's that I just don't care.  So you're deliberately confounding genre conventions and audience expectations.  You're more interested in the temporal and visual texture of the story than with its linear narrative.  You have a fleet of talented actors and musicians and cinematographers (and somehow critics) at your beck and call.  And were I so inclined--as so many film students and Los Angeles Times film critics seem to be--I could write an essay pondering the significance of various visual motifs, of the shifting line between dream and reality, of my own need for resolution.  I could fortify my arguments with a formidable parapet of invocations--Godard, Fassbender, Antonioni (and I'm sure it just perks Jarmusch's well-coiffed hair to be associated with such art house titans.  For the record, Jim--Godard was a dick too).  

The problem is, these are all external concepts the audience must bring to the film, the applications of which are invariably conjecture, and the appreciation of which is entirely intellectual and abstract.  In no way am I saying that a film should lead the viewer along like a puppy dog and tie up every last end in the third act.  Such films, in fact, are guilty of the same sin as those of Jarmusch--namely, disrespecting the viewer.  A work of art is a language, a means of communication between artist and viewer, and I enter into that relationship with the same expectation of mutual honesty and respect as I do any personal dialogue.  True communication is only possible if the other party is being genuine with me, attempting to tell me something deeply felt.  Art, then, is the seeking of a new means of communication--abandoning stale and inadequate conventions of dialogue and forming a more potent language, not for its own sake, but in the hopes of genuine mutual understanding.

In no way do I feel that Jarmusch is attempting communication.  Rather, the viewer is the incidental participant in an indulgent mental puzzle, an emotionless exercise in form and in vague, abstract ideas in which Jarmusch has no personal stake.  Jarmusch is leading the audience on like a cat chasing a string, showing off his mastery of filmic styles and his disdain for convention; and whether or not the cat catches the string is of no consequence to him.  Unfortunately, Jim, that's not how human relationship works.  You reveal something of yourself, and speak honestly, with the earnest hope that common ground will be found.  I'm willing to puzzle over a certain amount of narrative conundrums, but only if you're willing to occasionally venture out from behind your wall of scholarly formalism.  This happens, albeit rarely, in a couple of other films I've seen from him (and not often enough for redemption).  In The Limits of Control, he never even peeks his head out.