Film review by Kevin Patterson
STRANGER THAN PARADISE Rating: ***1/2 (out of four) R, 1984 Director: Jim Jarmusch Producer: Sara Driver Screenplay: Jim Jarmusch Starring Cast: John Lurie, Eszter Balint, Richard Edson, Cecilia Stark
Jim Jarmusch has been quoted as defending his often meandering films on the grounds that since life has no plot, there is no reason that film or fiction should either. He's got a point, and I suppose it would be easy to see his 1984 film STRANGER THAN PARADISE simply as an expression of this idea, in that it follows a trio of characters who never really do much of anything.
I've seen three Jarmusch films now (the other two being NIGHT ON EARTH and DEAD MAN), and I think that, aside from his knack for dropping in on characters at uneventful moments of their lives, he also has a talent for writing dialogue between characters who aren't quite communicating. NIGHT ON EARTH was an episodic collection of cab rides in which the driver and passenger(s) were on separate wavelengths in one way or another, and DEAD MAN followed a mild-mannered accountant and a nomadic tribesman who were brought together by a bizarre and dangerous turn of events and who didn't quite know what to make of each other. Characters who would normally nod politely at each other and pass are, in Jarmusch films, forced into extended contact with each other, with the result being an interesting and sometimes amusing form of subtle conflict.
In STRANGER THAN PARADISE, those characters are Willie (John Lurie), a Hungarian immigrant who has lived in New York City for the past ten years; his friend Eddie (Richard Edson); and his cousin Eva (Eszter Balint), who has just recently left Hungary and is on her way to Cleveland to live with her Aunt Lottie (Cecilia Stark). Because her aunt is in the hospital when she arrives, she needs a place to stay for ten days, and ends up at Willie's apartment. Willie is mostly annoyed by her presence, and when they do talk, it's about things like how American football is played and why a TV dinner is called a TV dinner. Eddie shows up and seems to like Eva, but nothing really develops, and then she heads off to Cleveland as planned.
The film jumps ahead to a year later, and Willie and Eddie are bored with their life in New York City. They go to Cleveland on vacation, but spend most of their time doing inconsequential things like playing cards with Aunt Lottie or going to the movies with Eva and her friend from work. They decide to take Eva to with them to Florida, where they almost run out of money from betting on dog races (though Willie wasn't too keen on this in the first place--"I just, uh, don't like the idea of...dog races," he objects at one point). Fortunately Eva comes up with some money at the last minute through an amusing coincidence.
Of course, if I took this premise to a Hollywood producer and pitched it as a script, (s)he would probably look it me as if I'd lost my mind. But what Jarmusch has discovered is that these odd little moments in the lives of ordinary people can be just as entertaining as murder mysteries or alien invasions. The subtle conflicts and personality differences between the three characters, which never even develop into a full-scale argument, are strangely engaging and never boring or repetitive.
Willie and Eddie get along, for example, but their friendship is still pretty shallow, and when they spend hours on end in a car together, it results in humorous moments of conversation like, "Willie, you never told me you were from Hungary." "Yeah, so what?" "Well, I thought you were an American...say, you think Cleveland will look anything like Budapest?" At one point Jarmusch keeps his camera on them for several minutes straight while they do nothing but drink beer and stare at the floor. Eva, whose arrival in the United States is probably the catalyst of this film if it can be said to have one, is also interesting for her calm yet blunt honesty. When Willie tries to get her to watch football, she says it's a stupid game, and when he buys her a dress she doesn't like, she tells him straightforward, "I think this dress is kind of ugly."
It would be wrong to say that STRANGER THAN PARADISE succeeds despite its lack of a plot and its deadpan characters. It succeeds *because* of them, turning what would normally be narrative weaknesses into virtues and showing us that three people sitting around not doing much of anything can be just as much fun to watch as James Bond infiltrating a mountaintop fortress to save the world. It's certainly not overwhelming (nor should it be), but I can think of few other films in which a director managed to get so much out of so little. I can imagine a sequel twenty years in the future, in which Willie, Eddie, and Eva are still just sitting around playing cards, watching TV and generally killing time. And I can also imagine myself first in line to see it.
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