The Limits Of Control

“You don’t speak Spanish, right?”

Another stranger in a strange land, this time Spain, where a character known simply as “Lone Man” (Isaach De Bankole) is sent on an unexplained mission. Everyone he meets along the way begins with this greeting. No one has a name. They are described as “Blonde”, “Violin”, “Molecules” etc. Each encounter includes the exchange of a box of matches, all of the same French brand, and each box given to Lone Man contains a small piece of paper with mysterious numbers. He swallows the paper, washing it down with one of his “two espressos, in separate cups”. He never seems to eat or drink anything else.

Each character introduces a different topic: music, films, science, art, while Lone Man listens in silence, and then he is given some instruction, such as “Wait three days until you see the bread. Then the violin will come to you.” He first flies to Madrid, where he stays in a striking modern concrete apartment block, then goes by train to Seville to a building with beautiful traditional tiles. He journeys again by train to a remote village and is eventually driven to an even more isolated spot. Thus his journey seems to take him back in time as well as through the landscape of Spain.

In a key scene, Blonde (Tilda Swinton) asks “Are you interested in films?” She begins to talk about the films she likes, her favourites being “films which are like dreams you’re not sure you really had….” As she says this we see two men passing by carrying a bathtub. She goes on to talk (in her blonde wig) about The Lady From Shanghai, “the only film in which Rita Hayworth was blonde.” Then she says she likes those scenes where “people just sit and don’t talk to each other,” and they sit in silence for a while.

How much of what appears to happen to Lone Man is actually a dream? There are repeated scenes of him lying, eyes open, on a bed. When asked at a crucial point how he did something he says “I used my imagination”. This is a film full of hints, clues and repeated allusions. Blonde reappears on a film poster, then is seen being bundled into a car. A naked woman (Paz de la Huerta) keeps turning up in different places, and a landmark building is seen first as a model, then on a postcard, before appearing in realty.

Phrases and lines from a song reappear in different contexts and in different languages. The parting words of Guitar (John Hurt) are “La vida no vale nada”, words which are later seen scrawled on the back of a van. All this repetition adds to the dreamlike quality of the film.

Jarmusch claims to have been influenced in his writing by early Jaques Rivette films which incorporate the idea of a conspiracy which is hard to pinpoint and seems during the course of the film to have grown out of control. The title also refers to the fact that each of us has a subjective view of the world, and each individual has the choice to avoid controls that have been established and perpetrated on us in terms of the meaning of something and how we receive that image.

Taking a subjective view, some may find this film too self-consciously packed with significance. What are we to make of lines like “The universe has no centre and no edges”, voiced by two different characters? Or the shot of broken flowers lying in the street which can only have been included as a nudge to Jarmusch fans?

Or, as Jarmusch suggests, rather than over-think it, why not let the film wash over you? There are echoes here of Antonioni, Almodóvar and especially John Boorman’s Point Blank. Chris Doyle’s beautiful cinematography makes the same use of frames within frames. Objects are seen through doors, windows and archways. Reflections intentionally confuse what is interior and what is exterior. In one shot a view of Madrid dissolves into a painting of that same scene in a gallery. There is also a very delicate soundscape. Music is used sparingly, usually to convey menace, and there is very little ambient sound, so that in one scene near the end of the film just the quiet rustle of the breeze suggests a change of mood.

How far you are willing to go along this journey may depend on the limits of your own generosity. But there is much here to enjoy.