Mystery Train (Jarmusch, 1989): Prince Charles Cinema, 6pm
This film, part of the Jim Jarmusch season, also screens on August 28th. Details here.
Time Out review:
A trilogy of off-beat, Beat-besotted tales, shot in gorgeous colour, set
in and around a seedy Memphis hotel. On one level it's about
passers-through: a Japanese teenage couple on a pilgrimage to Presley's
grave and Sun studios; an Italian taking her husband's coffin back to
Rome, forced to share a room with a garrulous American fleeing her
boyfriend; and an English 'Elvis', out of work, luck in love and his
head as he cruises round town with a black friend, a brother-in-law, and
a gun. But on a deeper level, the film is about storytelling, about how
we make connections between people, places, objects and time to create
meaning, and how, when these connections shift, meaning changes. Only
halfway through do we begin to grasp how the stories and characters
relate to each other. Happily, Jim Jarmusch's formal inventiveness is framed
by a rare flair for zany entertainment: Kudoh and Nagase make 'Far From
Yokohama' delightfully funny; Braschi brings the right wide-eyed wonder
to 'A Ghost'; and Joe Strummer proffers real legless menace in 'Lost in
Space', which at least explains the cause and effect of a mysterious gun
shot heard in the first two episodes. Best of all are Screamin' Jay Hawkins and Cinqué Lee as argumentative hotel receptionists hooked on Tom Waits'
late night radio show. They, and Jarmusch's remarkably civilised
direction, hold the whole shaggy dog affair together, turning it into
one of the best films of the year.
Geoff Andrew
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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