Coffee And Cigarettes Review
by Harvey S. Karten (harveycritic AT cs DOT com)May 11th, 2004
COFFEE AND CIGARETTES
Reviewed by: Harvey S. Karten
Grade: C+
United Artists
Directed by: Jim Jarmusch
Written by: Jim Jarmusch
Cast: Roberto Benigni, Cate Blanchett, Steve Buscemi, Steve Coogan,, Alfred Molina, Bill Murray, Iggy Pop
Screened at: MGM, NYC, 3/24/04
Jim Jarmusch may see himself as the American Anton Chekhov. Though the Russian playwright once said that when a gun is shown in the first act, it will be used by act three, Chekhov's plays rely not on moments of high drama and crisis but on family desolation, loneliness, the feeling of time wasted.
Jarmusch, like Chekhov, appears to believe that explosions, sudden crises, moments of lightning-like epiphanies have no place on the screen, at least on the screen designed by this most private of American film-makers. Though he sees a through-line, a spine to the film that reveals the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts, "Coffee and Cigarettes" is for the most part a series of vignettes unified only by the fact that the residents of its ten, separate skits relate to one another over java and joe or, in one case over properly brewed tea. Celebrities make their appearances, joined by others who are well known by film buffs. Given the disparities in temperaments, you don't expect much real communication to take place and, in most of the vignettes, there is a failure to connect. While this may be the writer-director's intention, some dialogue appears too hastily improvised, the wit found readily in a film like Louis Malle's "My Dinner with Andre" close to non-existent. While Malle's film allows two people of opposite temperaments played by Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn to talk for a most enjoyable two hours, Jarmusch fails to sustain interest in all but the pieces that feature an unobstructed flow of language.
As an example of the better pieces, we find an absurdist situation featuring two rappers, GZA and RZA of the group Wu- Tang Chan. Seated in a restaurant, they talk about the pernicious effects of cigarettes and coffee (as do the fellows in various other skits) but are interrupted by a waiter, Bill Murray, whom they assume is either slumming or hiding out. Murray drinks coffee directly from the pot as he joins the duo, interrupting their discussion of RZA's interest in alternative medicine. As a practitioner, RZA believes that coffee can cause delirium, which does not faze Mr. Murray, who bottoms-up the entire pot. The piece concludes with Murray's taking his new friends' advice to get rid of a cold.
A conversation with a twist involves Alfred Molina's attempt to prove to Steve Coogan that the two are genealogically cousins and that perhaps they could get together quite a bit more to discuss acting opportunities that the seemingly desperate Alfred appears to lack. Though Steve refuses to give out his number, he sees reason to regret his choice as Alfred receives an important call on his cell phone.
Technologically, the most involving action features Cate Blanchett talking to herself, the well-coiffed, celebrity Cate, in the lounge of a fine hotel taking a break between press junkets, evoking the jealousy of her "cousin Shelly."
Other sonatas in Jarmusch's orchestral piece range from the soporific to the deliberately redundant, ultimately allowing the writer-director, who has always marched to a different drummer, to prove that the mundane is really the mundane.
Rated R. 96 minutes.(c) 2004 by Harvey Karten at
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