The Jarmusch / Eustache Connection
The Jarmusch / Eustache Connection
Jim Jarmusch’s new release, Broken Flowers is not only an excellent film, but is also a great dedication to a modern French director, Jean Eustache. Jarmusch says that Eustache (who died in 1981 from a suicide) has inspired him over the years as an artist, and that "as I made this film, his presence was there with me."
Jarmusch has a distinct style, a metered pacing with space between words, characters almost visibly thinking. We are made very aware that we are watching a film. He plays with the Classical Hollywood Cinema model where great efforts which are made to make us believe we are in reality, rather than a theater - seamless editing; natural lighting and camera; ‘realistic’ characters and dialogue; classical three-act structure followed since Poetics.
Jarmusch turns this around and reminds us constantly that we are an audience. He shares this, as well as stylistic tendencies, with Eustache. A good example would be to compare Jarmusch’s earlier work, Stranger than Paradise, with Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore. Stranger than Paradise has a few scenes where the blocking and camera set-ups look to be exact copies of The Mother and the Whore. The central question of the films is also shared: characters are trying desperately to make a connection with each other, to understand, to truly, if only for a moment, touch. Eustache often has the characters looking directly into camera while addressing each other, but in a way, we become that other character. Hollywood avoids this mostly because it is unnerving, but for Eustache, as well as Jarmusch, that is exactly the point.
The fourth wall between audience and artist seems to break down in these films. We are not able to get lost in the film so much, to escape, but are rather pushed into a kind of involvement with the film which disallows the glossy eyed viewing which the Classical Hollywood model tends to encourage.
By the end of Broken Flowers, we are left with questions. As he gives the simple, Buddhist-like advice to a young man he mistakes for his son, Bill Murray’s character seems to be realizing something which is not only difficult to put in words, but which the filmmaker refuses to spell out for us. Don has not found what he was looking for, but it seems to me that he has found what he needed.
-shawn@grandcinema.com
Jim Jarmusch’s new release, Broken Flowers is not only an excellent film, but is also a great dedication to a modern French director, Jean Eustache. Jarmusch says that Eustache (who died in 1981 from a suicide) has inspired him over the years as an artist, and that "as I made this film, his presence was there with me."
Jarmusch has a distinct style, a metered pacing with space between words, characters almost visibly thinking. We are made very aware that we are watching a film. He plays with the Classical Hollywood Cinema model where great efforts which are made to make us believe we are in reality, rather than a theater - seamless editing; natural lighting and camera; ‘realistic’ characters and dialogue; classical three-act structure followed since Poetics.
Jarmusch turns this around and reminds us constantly that we are an audience. He shares this, as well as stylistic tendencies, with Eustache. A good example would be to compare Jarmusch’s earlier work, Stranger than Paradise, with Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore. Stranger than Paradise has a few scenes where the blocking and camera set-ups look to be exact copies of The Mother and the Whore. The central question of the films is also shared: characters are trying desperately to make a connection with each other, to understand, to truly, if only for a moment, touch. Eustache often has the characters looking directly into camera while addressing each other, but in a way, we become that other character. Hollywood avoids this mostly because it is unnerving, but for Eustache, as well as Jarmusch, that is exactly the point.
The fourth wall between audience and artist seems to break down in these films. We are not able to get lost in the film so much, to escape, but are rather pushed into a kind of involvement with the film which disallows the glossy eyed viewing which the Classical Hollywood model tends to encourage.
By the end of Broken Flowers, we are left with questions. As he gives the simple, Buddhist-like advice to a young man he mistakes for his son, Bill Murray’s character seems to be realizing something which is not only difficult to put in words, but which the filmmaker refuses to spell out for us. Don has not found what he was looking for, but it seems to me that he has found what he needed.
-shawn@grandcinema.com
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