The A/V Club has done one of the most uncongenial things a website can possibly do by not putting their recent Jim Jarmusch interview online therefore forcing us to do one of the most unattractive tasks imaginable: transcribing, blech.
Anyhow, the online/print mag spoke to the director of the polarizing surrealist noir, “The Limits of Control” (many hate it, eggheads like us fully enjoyed its hypnotically woozy qualities and European art film sensibilities) and his atypical approach this time out.
Basically, ‘Limits’ was incredibly unscripted and free-form, almost shot on the fly; more so than any Jarmusch project, including the existentialist Western, “Dead Man” (which also received poor reviews in its day, but is now generally regarded as a classic by those in the know). The one scene with Tilda Swinton was shot and Jarmusch realized he disliked it so much, he immediately rewrote it and they re-shot the completely different scene the next day (which by all intents and purposes totally changed the character. Likewise scenes written for actors were sometimes written the night before and or written during shooting in collaboration with the actors (the “script” was basically a 25-page story).
And in discussing his next film projects, he hints towards the future. He suggests his two styles: structured, in which he brings up “Ghost Dog,” and the unconventional approach which obviously applied to “The Limits Of Control.”
The filmmaker says he has a few projects on the go and one will definitely be in the more free-form, possibly elliptical, Alain Renais/”Le Samourai”-like ‘Control’? At least in basic form.
“This film was open to do those [detours off the roadmap] if it needed to. It depends on the project, but there is one project in the future that I would definitely like to approach like ‘Limits.’ Other ones may need to be a little bit more structured,” he told the AVClub.
An open, unstructured approach could mean anything and to speculate that it could be similar in tone to “The Limits Of Control,” is well, speculative at best, but dare to dream? We like a filmmaker that can stretch the conventions of cinema and even annoy an unimaginative slackjawed yob who would rather watch “Wolverine” (and frankly, that’s a big majority of people, sadly). We’re not going to try and convince people otherwise, but Jarmusch has already stated his influences from the film, Jean-Pierre Melville, Antonioni, Alain Renais, Jacques Rivette, John Boorman, etc., and while ‘Limits’ is obviously different, it does evoke that wandering and haunting spirit.
Dunno, maybe that’s just us bitching, but we almost feel like, how can you appreciate one and not the other? Or maybe everyone’s just looking forward to “Transformers 2” and could give a fuck… sigh.