Down by Law

1986 somnambulistic Three Stooges movie

Rating: 18/20

Plot: A former D.J., a pimp, and an Italian immigrant wind up in the same jail cell where they chant about ice cream and plan a break-out. Then, they break out.

These Jarmusch films sneak up on you. The genius of them, that is, tapping you on the shoulder and then doing a funny little shuffling dance step when you turn to look. Or sometimes just flashing you a goofy thumbs-up sign and giggling. The genius of Jarmusch is in how he uses the silent moments, spaces. The same part of me that likes the poetic and quietly slow perfection of a baseball game is the part of me that loves Down by Law and Stranger than Paradise. You get space to deal with your own thoughts, crawl in there with the characters, soak in the gray details. Jarmusch is also so good at taking advantage of his settings, here the dirty city and almost hauntingly empty streets (A quick thought: I was surprised to see so many names in the credits. As with his other movies, Jarmusch doesn't waste much time showing us superfluous characters. He's got to have some kind of record for lowest extras to movie ratio.), the architecture, a very limited and sparse jail cell, the bayou. There's just so much for me to love here that I wonder if Jarmusch made this movie just for me--an oily street littered with Tom's broken records and discarded things, the prostitute's giggle after the "bygones be bygones" line, the punky guy, that long pan over the prison bars over Lurie's "fake jazz," the mention of Beepy Rapozo and the imagining of all this insane shit, a brawl scene that makes think I could take Tom Waits in a fight if we came to blows, Waits in a hairnet (a dream come true), the appearance of Benigni and how he changes the film's tone and brings a little sizzle, Benigni's standing around and failed attempts to talk to Lurie and Waits (classic Jarmusch here), the line "Cigarettes don't help with hiccups, not in this country," the aforementioned nutty "I scream for ice cream" scene that makes me smile whenever I think about it just because there's not another director alive who would put that on the screen, Tom Waits' unnatural but engrossing performance that I can't take my eyes off (a scene where Jack tells him that he's going east and Tom gives a little twitch of his hand--it's a brilliant twitch!), "Jack! Jack! Do you have some fire?", the way Waits says "Bob," the amatory dance in the cafe, a sinking row boat, the final Bob Frostian shot that is almost overwhelmingly beautiful and sad. If you don't at least like this movie, I don't want anything to do with you.