Movie: Mystery Train (Jim Jarmusch, 1989)
It's been a while since my last entry here. That can partly be attributed to the World Cup. I enjoy that much more than the regular European competitions, as I think it produces higher quality and more entertaning football. The unusual circumstances the players find themselves in require much more thought and inventiveness from them and allow for more chaos and surprise. I was always going to watch it, and it's obvious by now that barely anyone was really meaningfully deterred by Qatar's misdeeds. There were many valid reasons for a mass boycott, but it never really had a chance in part because the main voices calling for one never seemed to realise what they are actually boycotting. The World Cup is of course first and foremost a fun football tournament, but it is also probably the only truly global mass media event that promotes the idea that the hopes, efforts and experiences of Argentinians, Moroccans and Croatians are equally valid as those of Germans, Americans and Britons. Calling to boycott the World Cup means calling on people to not see Muslim prayer used as a force to provide joy for millions around the world, to not see Iranians bravely take a stand against their government, dismantling cultural steretypes against them in the process, to not care about the cultures and interests of people in Rosario or Dubrovnik.
Filmmakers like Asghar Farhadi and Jafar Panahi are heroes, but a bunch of Iranian World Cup footballers not singing the national anthem for a couple minutes has a much bigger impact than any film they could make. You can argue that this is bad, and that football (especially elite football, which is genuinely quite rotten) should not have such an outsized influence, but the reality is that it does and no one seems capable of changing that or acheiving what the World Cup does - having billions of people from different backgrounds respond in different (but also quite similar) ways to the same unfolding events. Which brings us finally to Mystery Train. This is a great film, because Jarmusch knows that hotels (and trains!) are inherently cool and romantic, in part because at their best they are capable of replicating, on a much smaller scale, the effect of the World Cup. It's appealing to share a space with Japanese, Americans, Brits and Italians, and to know that you all experience together the same bumps in the hall, the same unruly guests, the same foods, and the same bellboy shenaningans, and to imagine the differences and similarties in how you respond to these events, and the life stories hidden in those responses. Jarmusch wonderfully creates these connections through Elvis songs and posters, trains, Memphis locations, gunshots, radio announcements, John Lurie's great score, and room amenities (one of tbe best bits in the film is a running joke (not) involving a TV). In the process Jarmusch also finds room to tell three specific stories (playing out in many different registers) with greatly developed singular characters.
All three stories are about non-Americans navigating Memphis, its citizens, and its culture. In the first one two Japanese teens, unexperienced in love and life, seek to experience the feeling of America that their favorite rock songs convey, and are confused when they don't. In the second story, an Italian woman grieving for her dead husband is subjected to a ghost story and to Americans taken advantage of her generosity. In the third story a British man has a chip on his shoulder, because he just lost his job and girlfriend and got called 'Elvis' one too many times. Elvis connects all three stories, as does Jarmusch' genuine love for, and understanding of, American small town culture. That's best visible in the first story, which starts unusually with a scene of non-Americans stepping foot on American soil, and being confusingly underwhelmed by it, wondering how their own Yokohama could be a more modern forward looking city than the birthplace of rock. This is the funniest story of the film, partly because Jun and Mizuko are a perfectly realised teen couple, uneasily balancing the unexpected mundane reality of Memphis with their insecurities about their young romance, and partly because Jarmusch uses their story to act as a bemused tour guide showcasing all the ways in which Memphis has retained its own eccentric provincialism in the face of being the birthplace of global pop culture. This culminates with a tour around the famous Sun Records (housed in a barely distinguished building), whose target audience seems to be the family from Weird Al Yankovic's The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota.
Jarmusch' view of Memphis' lovingly quaint approach to its heritage is not uncritical, without ever being condescending. We see how the myths around Elvis can be used as folksy stories to mask unwelcome sexual advances, and how the enormous attention lavished on 'The King' helps the city avoid other thornier subjects - all the Elvis pictures in the hotel inspire the annoyed British 'Elvis' to ask the same questions Mookie asked Cousin Sal about the Italian-American heroes featured in his pizzeria. It's a fun coincidence Do The Right Thing came out in the same year, but it's not surprising that Jarmusch thanks 'Spike' in the end credits. Jarmusch also clearly shares a kinship with other contemporaries. The darkly funny third story, and its stylised depiction of pugnaciously minded men stumbling into violence seems to have influenced both Tarantino and the Coen Brothers - Steve Buscemi has a role there that almost plays like a dry run for 'Donnie' in The Big Lebowski. And a shot of Nicoletta Braschi running through an airport seems like it has been a clear influence on the opening credits of Jackie Brown. With Tarantino he also shares an interest in looking at how Americans and non-Americans are influenced by each other's (pop) culture and how they interact through it. I've seen Jarmusch explore that also with great success in Paterson (I was happy to learn that the Japanese poet Paterson meets is the same actor that plays Jun here) and Only Lovers Left Alive, but this is much better than either. I only wished he left it a little more mysterious. Now everything ties up a bit too neatly together.
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