Coffee And Cigarettes Review
by Andy Keast (arthistoryguy AT aol DOT com)June 16th, 2004
Coffee and Cigarettes (2003): ***1/2 out of ****
Written and directed by Jim Jarmusch. Featuring Roberto Benigni, Cate Blanchett, Steve Buscemi, Steve Coogan, Isaach De Bankolé, Alex Descas, Renee French, GZA, Cinqué Lee, Joie Lee, Taylor Mead, Alfred Molina, Bill Murray, Iggy Pop, Bill Rice, Joe Rigano, RZA, Vinny Vella, Tom Waits, Jack White, Meg White and Steven Wright.
by Andy Keast
Jim Jarmusch's "Coffee and Cigarettes" is like "My Dinner With Andre" save all the annoying profundities. In fact, the profundities found in this movie are closer to reality than those in "Dinner" were: the dime store variety. They're
musings that only come about late at night, after consuming large amounts of caffeine, nicotine and sugar. It's a vignette film, the episodes of which have
nothing in common other than conversation over coffee and tobacco. One can sense a goofy joy in the story's simplicity and deadpan style. All the actors
in the film play themselves, while Jarmusch shot the segments on and off over some fifteen years. It's almost a comedic moving version of the photo album in
Wayne Wang's "Smoke," which contained a series of photographs, all of the same exact location, taken once a day from the same exact spot, over the course of several years.
Some episodes that I enjoyed were: one where a singer-songwriter (Tom Waits) rationalizes smoking a derelict cigarette by having quit, two old friends (Isaach De Bankolé and Alex Descas) reunite only to discover that they have nothing to talk about, and a beautiful production assistant (Renee French) flips through a firearm catalog while being annoyed by a waiter (any seasoned coffee-drinker will recognize the dilemma of the waiter replenishing a half-empty cup, thereby throwing off the ratio of sugar to cream to coffee). The two best performances in the movie are by Steve Coogan, whose discovery of a distant relative is met my hilarious improvisation, and by Cate Blanchett, who convincingly creates two completely different people in less than fifteen minutes of screen time. She plays herself and a cousin, "Shelby," in Jarmusch's first venture into visual effects: the shots are seamless, the split-screen line untraceable and Blanchett's timing flawless.
This is really just a more ambitious version of Jarmusch's "Night on Earth," an
anthology of taxicab conversations. Here they discuss all kinds of subjects from Nicola Tesla to roots music to medicine. Almost every vignette has a toast of some kind, and characters who call each other by the wrong name -both common occurrences in idle chit-chat (at one point someone is referred to as "Albert Molina"). If one wishes to spin a "theme" out of the film, it's parity: the characters are often siblings, relatives, partners or co-workers, and a few hours of coffee and cigarettes could become dull rather fast without someone to drink and smoke with. "Coffee and Cigarettes" doesn't have the scope of "Dead Man" or "Down by Law," but it *is* non-demanding and very funny.
More on 'Coffee And Cigarettes'...
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