COFFEE AND CIGARETTES

Rating: 5

Are you a bug, Bill Murray?” It’’s an odd question, but in the context of Jim Jarmusch’’s brilliant consideration of human interaction, COFFEE AND CIGARETTES, there is both genius and poetry to it. This series of vignettes filmed in glossy, nostalgic black and white examines ten different conversations that on the surface have nothing in common but the eponymous addictions. And an odd assortment of tables with checkerboard patterns. Look closer, though, listen between the lines and suddenly there’s a universe of moments that are perhaps tangential, but nonetheless all interconnected.
All the actors play themselves, except for Cate Blanchett, who also plays her scruffy cousin, Shelley. Finding themselves on opposite ends of the ladder of success, they awkwardly get through a chat over coffee where other things are discussed, but guilt and resentment are the real topic. Putative cousins, cuddly Alfred Molina and supercilious Steve Coogan, meet and experience a change in the upper-handedness of Hollywood so precipitous and yet so elegant that it takes everyone’’s breath away. An iirked and irascible Tom Waits discovers that the dive where he and Iggy Pop are enjoying the titular treats doesn’’t have any of his songs on the juke box, and then goes on to explain with exquisite sophistry why having given up smoking is the reason that he can light up a cigarette without guilt. Coffee refills, dentist’s appointment, and the confusion of fraternal twins Cinque and Jolie Lee over who is wearing whose clothes are all bits of the same puzzle and that makes sense as soon as Jack White explains to his sister Meg the wonder of Nicolo Tesla’’s theory of terrestrial resonance.
There amid Jack’’s Tesla coil in the little red wagon’ and a previous dissertation by a typically twitchy Steve Buscemi on the theory of evil twins’ are people having bits of the same conversation, refracted and reflected in an infinite number of variations. Issues of personal identity and personal boundaries are dissected as people talk, sometimes at cross purposes, sometimes while jockeying for power, and sometimes without saying a word. There are the harmonies and dissonance in the silences that resonate more powerfully that verbiage, what with words being a fluid medium, as people say one thing and mean another. Take the two long separated friends (Isaach De Bankole and Alex Descas) who meet for coffee and almost come to blows as one expresses increasingly insistent concern for the other’s welfare.
Jarmusch may use a static camera for his shots, but he fills the screen with a vibrancy that is both playful and intelligent. The sounds of ordinary things are heightened, the gurgle of coffee falling into a cup, the scrape of a chair on the floor. Such focus on little things force us to focus, too, on the words, on the body language, and on the settings, revealing the remarkable similarity between what goes on in the dingy bar a half-step above Skid Row and the posh coffee lounge of a Manhattan hotel. He draws a bead on the delicious absurdities in which we all both partake and purvey that go unnoticed in everyday life, but that are, oddly, its building blocks.
Jarmusch thoughtfully observes the human compulsion to connect via conversation in all its glorious absurdity. Even the mysterious Renee, who mercilessly fends off a smitten waiter (E. J. Rodriguez) trying to refill her coffee cup, indulges in a half-smile before Jarmusch moves on. There is something sweet and even comforting in pondering that this compulsion is brought on by the acoustical resonance of the planet on which we find ourselves.
COFFEE AND CIGARETTES subtly builds to a crescendo as we eavesdrop on these folks, arriving at the penultimate vignette entitled “Delirium”, the one in which the bug question is posed and the true effects of caffeine and nicotine are revealed by Gza and The Rza as received wisdom blends with a practical joke. Jarmusch sends us on our way with the gentle “Champagne” where reality and imagination merge to the strains of Mahler and the imagined wonders of other times and other places. It’’s an ideal ending to this mind expanding trip.