The Limits Of Control

Synopsis: A mysterious loner travels through Spain on a secret mission. Along the way he meets a series of enigmatic strangers whose cryptic advice guides him on his journey.

Travelling alone in a strange land, in the sharpest suit I have ever seen outside an Armani catalogue is Jim Jarmusch’s latest protagonist, known only as ‘The Lone Man’. He is played with a compelling mix of determination and calm by Isaach De Bankolé (who played the ice cream vendor in Ghost Dog, 1999). He practises Tai Chi meticulously and walks with a controlled swagger. He doesn’t say much but De Bankolé is intriguing to watch. He has the presence of a lion slowly stalking its prey and his cheekbones are so fierce they look as if they are made with metal. Unfortunately neither De Bankolé’s masculine allure nor his cheekbones are strong enough to sustain two long hours of cinematic pondering on what may have been intended as an incisive critique of the malignant forces of mass culture and its toxic effect on love, art and history but comes across as yet another flimsy justification for an auteur director to hang out in Spain with attractive and talented actors.

The Lone Man is on a mission, why, we never know, and Jarmusch never feels the need to tell us. Perhaps this would be too pedestrian for his pretensions to the higher echelons of Art House film-making. Occasionally we catch a glimmer of what lies beneath enigmatic exterior: a faint smile of affection or a soft gaze into the middle distance hint at some deep yearning, but for the most part De Bankolé’s character is hermetically-sealed. Jarmusch and his outstanding cinematographer, Christopher Doyle hold us away from him. The frame cuts off the edges of his figure and Jarmusch constantly cuts to the next shot before De Bankolé completes his actions. The Lone Man may be a stranger in a strange land but he is just as foreign to the audience as he is to the Spanish public in the streets.

As he travels from Madrid and into the rugged Spanish countryside, The Lone Man has a series of encounters with exotic-looking characters with names like ‘The Nude’ (Paz de la Huerta), ‘The Blonde’ (Tilda Swinton) and ‘The Mexican’ (Gael García Bernal), who all appear to have just been shopping at a cut price costume shop. Each meeting provides our loner with a presumably useful clue to whatever he is searching for and evokes yet another elliptical conversation in which esoteric conundrums regarding Subjectivity and Art (with a very big capital ‘A’) are pondered. We are deep in metaphorical territory here, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but for some reason Jarmusch feels the need to hint at the deeper significance beneath the banal chit-chat so frequently and in such a heavy-handed way that the conversations become absolutely aggravating.

Allegorical stories tread a fine line between being bloody obvious (and hence awful) and bloody baffling (and hence incomprehensible). The Limits Of Control manages to be both.   The film is built around a series of repetitions which create a powerfully languid rhythm but when it should crescendo the film only folds in upon itself, and spends the rest of the time wading through the same territory over and over again, testing the limits of the audience’s patience as well as their limits of control. That the trailer is more compelling than the finished film is proof that any compression would not have hurt Jarmusch’s original concept and would have gone a long way to alleviate audience fatigue.

Jarmusch is guilty of loving a grand idea, loving his actors and loving his scenes but despite all this love he is unable to get a lasso around this flatly monotone beast and control it in such a way that it becomes something entertaining and insightful. When The Lone Man eventually meets ‘The American’ (Bill Murray), the pay off is admittedly satisfying, but after the limits of endurance have been stretched to such a point, you have to ask if it was really worth it.

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