Film Review: Coffee and Cigarettes. Director: Jim Jarmusch.

 

Art films are films that exemplify life sans extravagance and pomp. They are the ones that warrant the use of different perception and lens, so that their message can be conveyed effectively. One such film is the 2003 Black and White 'Coffee and Cigarettes', an artistic and unconventional film by Jim Jarmusch. 

The film depicts eight short stories in which characters from all walks of life who play themselves (except Cate Blanchett, who plays a double role), and meet in different cafes in different parts of America to talk, to have a cup of coffee and to light a cigarette are shown. The Kafkaesque picturization where the characters and their conversations only lead, but not feed with the final outcome succeeds in intriguing the audience. The film leaves most things to individual perception and that is its speciality. 

It seems that Jim Jarmusch takes to heart what 'The Joker' in 'The Dark Knight' asked even before he asked it. He seems to question the seriousness of life and of mien and answers it in this film. In each fifteen minute short story, it seems that as the characters are conversing with each other, they are also conversing with us. The topics of their conversations are mundane and devoid of intellectualism. But, banality is the supreme form of intellectuality. The film is intellectual because of lack of intellectualism in characterization, much like artificial intelligence which requires artifice, which again requires intelligence. 

Even though the film shows quotidian yet riveting conversations, the film mostly depicts the unsaid, as the saying goes, between what is meant and not said what is said and not meant, much meaning is rendered meaningless. Therein lies the need for a different perception. 

As the audience watches this unique film, it is entertained to the highest possible degree. 'Coffee and Cigarettes' is like a bazaar where people of all age-groups, having a certain relationship with the characters they are with, traversing through the path of life, are the same as the audience. Every member of the audience can find themselves in this film. 

The aspect of unplanned direction of life and the focus on the human element is in alignment with the director's own belief that, "life has no plot, why should films or fiction?" This film is an almost Panglossian work of fiction. The depiction in black and white is indicative of the constancy in change in a world where change is the only constant. The complete mastery in the art of story telling is soul-stirring. The terse ending and bathos in most stories, and a proper climax in some makes the film a motley of emotions. 

The film is about all types of people. After all, films are people in motion and the lives of people are films portraying themselves. Jarmusch is an artist and a savant. His clarity of thought is evident by way of impeccable casting, immaculate selection of the light and mellifluous background music, coupled with the excellent performance of all the actors. 

The entire film has an effect of widening the perception with empyreal felicity. It almost feels that the film is an antidote against the misery of the world. The struggle of man within himself and his struggle of projecting himself a certain way before others is wonderfully touched upon in this film. 

Overall, 'Coffee and Cigarettes' is an under-rated work of art soused in the most inexhaustible sources of magic: words, and the spaces between them. This film needs to be watched and is worthy of all the appreciation. 

MY TAKE: 9/10 

Author: Ms. Radhika Sunil Vaidya. 

Email i.d. : radhika.vaidya98@gmail.com

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/radhika.vaidya.50

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/radhika-vaidya-908aa1167/
Image Courtesy:   Google, Pinterest.