A Jim Jarmusch Retrospective — Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)
A review of one of the most influential independent filmmaker’s subtle, funny, and poignant works.
“Cigarettes and coffee, man, that’s a combination.”
Jim Jarmusch, who has arguably contributed as much as anyone to the popularisation of independent cinema, created one of his best works at the ripe age of fifty-three. Though, it’s worth remembering that this film was crafted over several years (seventeen, in fact) so the film is as much an insight into Jarmusch’s stylistic consistency as it is a testament to his ability to maintain tone across eleven vignettes, filmed over almost two decades.
Though there is not even a modicum of plot, there are glimmers of some of the scenes taking on a more conventional approach to filmmaking — but that’s only when compared against some of Jarmusch’s other directorial endeavours.
From the man that made Stranger Than Paradise (1984), the segment featuring Steve Coogan and Alfred Molina feels like somewhat of a departure from his earlier work. Instead of long silences, briefly interrupted with meandering stream-of-consciousness dialogue, we are given uncomfortable silences that are punctuated by wry humour, which then leads to a scene that feels like a stretched rubber-band; just how much comedic discomfort can be created before the conversation breaks down organically? How much can the two performers and the one man behind the camera make this encounter feel like a prolonged car-crash before it all stops feeling real?
And that’s ultimately what this film consists of: two people in front of a camera, sharing a coffee and a cigarette, talking about nothing in particular. As mentioned, the vignette with Coogan and Molina — both of whom knock it out of the park with their honed British humour — feels the most conventional, the closest thing we will get to a traditional Hollywood scene. The rest feels even barer, stripped down to its most essential parts.
The section titled Renée, though less than five minutes in length, feels interminably long due to the lack of any substantial change in the narrative we’re presented with. There is the minimum amount of conversation required to create conflict — which consists of Renée telling the waiter that he has ruined her coffee — and all else revolves around this point of contention: each time the waiter returns (in silence) to refill her cup, we wonder if her irritation will reach a boiling point — but it never does. We wait in anticipation, intrigued by Renée’s fascination with her gun magazine, but it soon becomes clear that Jarmusch is just toying with us; nothing is going to happen.
Perhaps, then, the reason why this film is more than just a sum of its parts — and more than the sum of its vignettes — is because Jarmusch finds what is interesting about these quiet moments: the potential for drama, change, conflict, even if it is very small and even if it doesn’t happen at all. It could be Iggy Pop struggling to make himself understood as Tom Waits intentionally makes him feel uncomfortable. Or, it could be Cate Blanchett’s characters, two cousins meeting again for the first time in a while, faking niceties in order to maintain some semblance of a relationship as one is changed by fame and success and the other cannot help but seethe, embittered and loathsome. Anything could happen, even if nothing does.
And we feel present for all of it because we are waiting for that first, significant dramatic shift. Long shots provide us with the sensation that we are there enjoying our lunch of caffeine and nicotine (which, by the way, is very unhealthy) with the characters, who either expound upon their theories of what Elvis’ twin had to do with the King’s career decline, or criticise their counterpart’s lifestyle choices: “Those things’ll kill ya!”
Finally, Jarmusch manages to close out his odyssey with the perfect send-off: two old blue-collar workers, bordering on senility, enjoying a smoke and a bad cup of coffee. Again, not much of note occurs, yet everything is here.
What makes this film resonant (and surprisingly poignant) is that Jarmusch recognises how much these encounters add to our lives. While they’re often forgotten about — because, after all, they are quite trivial — they still provide us with enough interest to do it again, over and over, until we too are old and sitting with our even older friend, lamenting the state of the coffee machine. A coffee and a cigarette with the right person — and arguably even more so with the wrong person — adds a dash of colour to what would otherwise be a black-and-white day. It allows us to have some joie de vivre, which in turn enables us to transform coffee into champagne, the nectar of the gods.
And the cigarette remains a cigarette, which, of course, is not very healthy at all.
