Screening Room

by Ari

Mystery Train (Jim Jarmusch, 1989)

I love the way Jarmusch uses location for films like Coffee and Cigarettes, Night on Earth and the entertaining, often hilarious comedy Mystery Train. These three films tell their stories by using a very simple but effective setting. With Coffee and Cigarettes it’s a coffee shop, with Night on Earth it’s a taxi, in Mystery Train it’s a hotel in Memphis. The film presents three different stories that takes place on the same night, all concluding in this cheap hotel in a seedy part of town and thematically connected by a fascination with Elvis Presley. The first story involves a young Japanese couple traveling to Memphis to visit famous places like Sun Studios. The young girl, Mitzuko (Youki Kudoh) worships Elvis while her boyfriend Jun (Masatoshi Nagase) prefers Carl Perkins. The second story has an Italian woman named Luisa(Nicoletta Braschi) stuck in Memphis for a night after the death of her husband. After she’s followed by two potentially dangerous men, she checks into the hotel and stays with a chatty woman (Elizabeth Bracco) who broke up with her boyfriend Johnny that morning. In the middle of the night Luisa is visited by the ghost of Elvis. In the third story we meet Johnny (Joe Strummer), Charlie (Steve Buscemi) and Will Robinson (Rick Aviles). These three get into serious trouble after Johnny robs a liquor store and shoots the owner. Oh, and his nickname is Elvis. In between these stories we get amusing sequences with the hotel’s night clerk (Screamin' Jay Hawkins) and the bellboy (Cinque Lee). Being a film by Jim Jarmusch, it’s no surprise that Mystery Train finds something amusing in the oddest and most unexpected of situations. The characters are all interesting, particularly the stoic and cool Jun, whose first thought after having sex with his girlfriend is whether women worry about their hairstyles all the time. Jarmuch views Memphis, from the look of its of streets to the attitude of its people, through the perspective of an outsider or visitor. His visuals are beautiful in their simplicity, using vibrant colors as effectively as he used black and white in Down By Law. One of Jarmusch’s best.

A Room With a View (James Ivory, 1985)

It’s amazing to watch this film after seeing Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood or watching him as Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York. This can’t possibly be the same man, can it? A Room With a View is a classically built Merchant/Ivory romantic drama with great performances by Helena Bonham Carter, Julian Sands and the one and only Day-Lewis. It’s a sluggishly paced film at times (especially at the beginning), but the characters and emotion eventually win you over as the story progresses. It’s a handsome period piece with high production values; the costumes, sets and imagery are all beautifully realized. Carter is Lucy Honeychurch, on vacation in Florence with her companion Ms. Bartlett (Maggie Smith). She meets George Emerson (Sands), a peculiar young man who falls in love with her with a passion like nothing she’s ever experienced. One day he kisses her by surprise, and she’s so taken by it, so shocked and awed, that she has no idea how to react. Instead of immediately professing her love, she has Ms. Bartlett handle the situation so it never happens again. When Lucy returns home a few months later, she agrees to marry the uptight square Cecil Vyse (Day-Lewis). He refuses to play sports, he winces when Lucy’s younger brother plays the piano, he believes reading aloud is sufficient entertainment for those around him. When Emerson and his father (Denholm Elliott in great little role) move into the neighborhood, Lucy struggles to control her true feelings. The film’s commentary against the class system in England works well enough, but it’s the romantic troubles between George and Lucy that make the film so enjoyable. And to quote Ebert, “Daniel Day Lewis creates a masterpiece in his performance as Cecil”.