Mystery Train (1989)
Written and directed by Jim Jarmusch
Like Soderbergh, van Sant, and Linklater, Jim Jarmusch is a director who rose to prominence during this period, and I’m not sure how I feel about him. There are Jarmusch films I love (Paterson, Broken Flowers, Ghost Dog), while others I’m a bit more confounded by. I still need to watch his first two films as I hear tremendous things. Like several of his other pictures, Mystery Train is actually a series of short films with wraparound scenes that connect them. It seems to be a structure he’s very comfortable working in, using vignettes about different characters in the same place or moments from the same character’s life. His movies have such a relaxed feeling about them, a mishmash of Laurel & Hardy and David Lynch at times, and are old-fashioned but feel incredibly fresh.
Mystery Train is a comedy-anthology centered around people living in and visiting Memphis, Tennessee. A Japanese couple (Youki Kudoh and Masatoshi Nagase) is on a pilgrimage to see Graceland and walk where Elvis walked. An Italian widow (Nicoletta Braschi) is stranded overnight in the city and encounters a familiar ghost. An Englishman (Joe Strummer) and his two buddies (Rick Aviles and Steve Buscemi) get into trouble throughout a single night. They all end up at a rundown hotel being watched over by the night clerk (Screamin’ Jay Hawkins) and a bellhop (Cinqué Lee). The sound of a gunshot links the three stories together.
I found it very interesting that Jarmusch wrote this film without visiting Memphis. He’d been reading Chaucer and watching Italian comedic and Japanese ghost anthology films when he decided to make his own. An early draft of a one-act play about a couple traveling and fighting served as the foundation and became the story of the Japanese tourists in Memphis. Roles were developed around people Jarmusch knew and who could participate in the filming. There was no end goal in mind other than the initial idea and seeing how it could be developed into characters, situations, and simple stories. This was also Jarmusch’s first color film, and he reportedly was very particular about that aspect, ensuring it matched the tone & aesthetic of his previous work.
Though they have gone in two very different directions, I see a lot of similarities between the work of Jarmusch and Quentin Tarantino. They both love old movies and mimic them by recreating those aesthetics in individually unique ways. The two filmmakers definitely cross paths in the structures of many of their films, often playing with parallel narratives and moving backward and forward in time. They both love pop culture, with Tarantino even making an apparition of Elvis a key plot point in his script for True Romance. There is, of course, the Steve Buscemi factor, an actor who has appeared in so many films I’ve gotten to the point where, if it was made in the mid-1980s to the present, I am no longer surprised when he shows up.
Jarmusch does an excellent job of capturing the crumbling state of Tennessee’s big cities. We left in 2021, and I still remember how, despite new developments in Nashville, there were still large swaths that most tourists wouldn’t see that were being allowed to decay. I’d visited Memphis several times, and it felt very similar. The director is very focused on building a vibe, as all Jarmusch films are, and he does it perfectly. Every exterior shot, every bit of lighting, the wardrobe, the hair, the make-up, and the music all serve a single purpose: to provide the audience with a feeling. That feeling is chill, mysterious, dreamlike.
I can easily see how Jarmusch will rub some people wrong if they sit down expecting a film focused on the plot. That is one of the most annoying things about contemporary audiences. You give them a picture made by Jarmusch or Lynch or any other atmospheric filmmaker, and they whine about not having a plot. I lay that at the feet of a type of internet discourse that searches for “plot holes” constantly. Film is not a medium inherently concerned about Plot. It’s a visual medium, arguably one of sound, too, but the image always takes precedence.
If art is the expression of an artist’s feelings & thoughts, then a tightly structured plot is not something you’ll inherently find. I find most audiences in the States are exceptionally lazy when it comes to film, demanding “escapist” cinema that lets them disassociate from their lives. When they say “escapist,” they mean “stupid,” but that is not precisely escapist. It would be hard to argue that Fellini was making realism films, yet they were both intelligent and fantastical. Jarmusch is similar in that way. He is making contemporary fairy tales; if you’ve ever read something like the Brothers Grimm, they are not tightly plotted.
Jarmusch would have borne witness to much of Elvis’s career as a child into adulthood, and the singer seeped into the cultural consciousness very quickly. Mystery Train explores that mythic nature, wanting to know what Elvis means to all these people. That isn’t going to be answered in a literal, direct way but through the images and the music. The people from whom Elvis derived his sound, Black people, and those who followed his siren song to Memphis in the hopes of breaking out themselves are at the center of this story. The world is not full of Elvises, but people who dream of being like him, and never really get there. There’s a sad beauty in that, and it’s at the heart of Mystery Train.
I can’t say I adore Jarmusch’s work. I respect his films because they are unique and come from his particular voice. Ghost Dog is a samurai movie unlike any you’ve ever seen, and Dead Man is not a Western movie in the traditional sense. Where Jarmusch puts his energy in his work is through the rigid formalism. While they may have the vibe of a laid-back stoner, he is intense about how his films are built. Scenes do not play out slowly, lingeringly because he felt like it; it’s because he has a specific intent. The most important thing is how his audience feels while they watch his movies. If you’ve never seen a Jim Jarmusch flick, Mystery Train makes a fantastic one to start with. It’s a journey to familiar places that suddenly feel unlike any place you’ve ever been.
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