Stranger Than Paradise

Watching TV, playing poker, and sleeping are pretty much everything Willie does every day. His life is uneventful to say the least, and it seems that he's completely unaware that he is trapped in his illusion of 'American dream', leading his life mindlessly as isolation created for him an independent-seeming façade that numbs his brain and blinds him from realising his purposeless life. Then comes his cousin, Eva, to live with him for a few days before moving to Cleveland with her aunt. Her 10-day stay, as short as it is, creates ripples in Willie's monotonous daily routine that incrementally changes and ultimately upends his life. Eva's uninvited stay is met by Willie with reluctance, but Jarmusch's long and uninterrupted shots that abruptly fade out in a snippet-like way infuse the scenes the trio (as Willie's friend, Eddie, joins them) share together with an airy flair that urges the viewer to notice them unspokenly communicate, gradually getting along and, eventually, grow a strong attachment to each other. Quiet, still and stagnant as they are, these moments come across as inviting and endearing because of the authentic spontaneity that permeates the intermittent the delivery of the dialogue. As absurdism thrives on randomness, silence and repetition, the movie is adequately suffused in dry humour. The third chapter is probably the weakest, but it has some shots of barren and desolate landscapes that sublimely invoke the theme of isolation and detachment, and a picaresque quality to it that balances out the film's bleakness.

Jim Jarmusch's second feature film follows the same minimalist formula of his debut. Stranger Than Paradise is another of those ''so-called gems'' of indie cinema that depicts with a stunning freshness and a laudable ease the zeitgeist ****. Part of me might consider it a sort of twin sister to Permanent Vacation and not because they feel like such similar films because of their lighthearted plots and similar pacing, but because they both share the same intricacies and the same subtleties that despite their deceptive simplicity infuse them with a remarkable identity. It has nothing out of the ordinary, but it's clever and above all authentic. If you get those two elements to work properly, they will end up doing most of the work for you, and for Jarmusch it clearly proved to be true.