Download Mystery Train Introduction In a Jim Jarmusch movie, the simple fact

Mystery Train Introduction
In a Jim Jarmusch movie, the simple fact of being somewhere new, somewhere
confusing, is nourishment for the senses. If you have seen any of his earlier films you will
recognise his style of filming comic and bittersweet love letters to America. He is not
blind to the country’s ugliness and faults but still delights in its uniqueness and music.
Today’s film is set in Memphis, the mythic birthplace of American popular music. You will
hear music by Otis Redding, Roy Orbison, Junior Parker, Rufus Thomas (who in a cameo
role asks for a match at the railway station) and of course the King himself; Elvis Presley.
Screamin’ Jay Hawkins whose outrageous song ‘I put a spell on you’ was used in
Jarmusch’s very first feature film is now the outrageously dressed night clerk in ‘Mystery
train’. Watch the reactions in his eyes as different guests walk into his foyer.
Today we have three separate stories that all pass through the same ramshackle hotel.
Each involves different groups of outsiders who never meet yet all happen to tune into
the same radio station at 2:17 in the morning and later hear a single gunshot at daylight.
Look out for the other tenuous links between the three stories.
Jarmusch seems to like the company of musicians. John Lurie who you saw last month in
‘Paris, Texas’ as the pimp watching over the girls in the peep show lounge, composed the
original score for this film. Joe Strummer, the very cool founder and lead singer of
London punk band ‘The Clash’ is the English character called ‘Elvis’ in the final story.
‘Mystery Train’ is a sparely edited and with much improvised dialogue; if the languid pace
of ‘Paris Texas’ drove you crazy then I suggest you leave now and come back next year
for the Ray Lawrence retrospective. This is a shorter film though at only 105 minutes.
The director has said that he likes the spaces that happen between things, even between
dialogue. Sometimes that’s a lot more meaningful than the dialogue itself. So try to get
into that head space to pick up on the humour of this film.
Some of the opening scenes could be straight out of ‘Paris, Texas’; once again you will
see and hear freight trains rumbling by, neon lit back streets and all manner of shady and
down and out street characters.
Mystery Train Leader’s notes
Q: Elvis Presley’s memory hovers over this film. What were some of your favourite ‘Elvis’
moments??
A: The bad portraits in each room / The Elvis as hitch-hiker urban myth / Elvis’ weight on
Jupiter trivia / Elvis’ plastic comb.
“Elvis is more influential than I thought.” (Persian King, Buddha, Statue of Liberty,
Madonna)
Q: What visual similarities did you spot with ‘Paris,Texas’??
A: Pickup trucks / Freight trains passing / piles of junk and rundown buildings.
Q: Did any of you see Rufus Thomas; the old black guy who asks the Japanese tourists for
a light?? Many see him as the real king of Memphis, but of course he passes
unrecognised by most of the audience.
Q: Would you agree that the film’s narrative path is controlled by character rather than
plot??
A: To quote the director: “Often what’s funny or moving to me is what happens between
moments of dialogue, how people react to each other.” The Japanese have a word for
which there is no English equivalent, but basically means the space between things which
defines those things by not being part of them.
Listen to this description: “Jarmusch’s particular sensibility proceeds via poetic incident
as opposed to prose coherence…his films engage impressions rather being narrative
driven.”
Q: What do you see as ‘poetic’ about the film’s structure?
A: Three separate stories are connected in time and space by smaller events; a hotel, a
song on the radio, a gunshot. Each story follows a separate journey on the same streets
and ends with them all leaving Memphis.
A: The hotel’s desk clerk and bellhop do an overlapping and extended comic routine as
bookends to each segment.
The director’s vision is abstract: looking at the same action from different perspectives the details do not present a wider story or dramatic flow.
Q: Does this annoy you or please you??
Q: What does the town of Memphis mean to different characters?
A: The Japanese tourists are like pilgrims keen to experience this mythic place.
The Italian widow is on a forced stopover and does her best to avoid creepy American
men and people who want her money, while keeping her personal grief quietly to
herself. To her, Elvis is a local curiosity but is the only one blessed with a visitation from
the King’s ghost.
The recently unemployed Elvis has broken up with his wife, doesn’t know what to do
next or where to go and is subconsciously looking for trouble.
Barber Charlie just wants to go home.
Q: How are their hopes or expectations ruined or altered in some way by the appeal of
Elvis Presley?
A: The tour guide speaks too fast / British ‘Elvis’ hates being called that / Urban myth
stories are just ways of scamming outsiders of their money / the hotel portraits of Elvis
get uglier with each room / Jun’s succinct response to the gunshot; “This is America” /
A: “If Elvis represents the American Dream and Memphis the birth place of American
music, then both still exist today but only in shadowy form.”
Q: So through the director’s eyes what do we first see of Memphis?
A: Piles of cars ready for metal recycling / a ghost town of near empty streets / rundown
buildings / all manner of street low lifes and characters.
Next year I am planning to show Babel which is another multi-strand story line movie.
Critic Dennis Lim had this to say of today’s movie and Babel:
“Multi-strand movies have proliferated in the two decades since Mystery Train and its
clear to see how little Jarmusch’s wise unassuming film has in common with the sleight
of hand flamboyance of Pulp Fiction or the reductive fraudulence of Babel or Crash which
yank their narrative threads together in the hope of producing grand unified theories on
the human condition. Jarmusch is not interested in plot convergence, quite the
opposite; connections between strangers are all the more melancholy for being transient
and partial. As the train pulls out of Memphis, some but not all the characters are on
board; the film leaves the lovely impression that what we’ve seen is special for its
ordinariness, three stories amongst many.”