Stranger Than Paradise

1984 comedy

Rating: 20/20

Plot: A guy in New York has his life disrupted by a visit from his young Hungarian cousin. She stays for a week and grows on him, enough for him to drive with his pal Eddie to visit her in Cleveland with money from gambling. Later, they go to Florida.

Here's another one of those great one-and-done performances. Cecillia Stark, who plays Aunt Lotte, played this part when she was 85 or 86 and died in 1985. When I watched Stranger Than Paradise this time, probably my fourth or fifth time, she was my favorite thing about the movie. "You son of a bitch!" might be the funniest delivery of a line ever, and her way of answering the door when Willie and Eddie visit cracked me up. Hers isn't even the best performance in this movie. No, that would be the brief appearance of Rammellzee as the guy who gives Ava some money. Almost shockingly, this was his only acting job. He didn't die though. Rammellzee, who sounds like he stole his name from a fairy tale or something, probably just figured there was no way he was topping this. Nice glasses, by the way.

I forced somebody to see this once, and he didn't like it so much. He liked the characters fine but was annoyed because they didn't have anything to do. I don't know why good movie characters need a lot to do anyway, but one of the main reasons I think this movie is funny is because these characters don't have much to do. It lets them and their relationships grow in a unique way. These characters exist in a kind of purgatory, characters shaped by forces they can't understand. Willie whines about Eva "disrupting" his life which is funny because he doesn't really seem to have much of one. He watches T.V., eats T.V. dinners, plays Solitaire, stands or sometimes sits around, occasionally goes to the track. Of course, that is while Eva is in town, so who knows what kind of exciting life the guy has when she's not around. The character doesn't do anything and trudges through this kind of bleak existence because there's nothing for him to do. Jarmusch's characters live in these empty worlds, these dead lonely cities. New York never looks this completely empty in any other movie, Cleveland's bleak, and even Florida looks like the most depressing places on earth. I imagine Budapest was just as depressing. It's not the place that shapes these characters' lives. They all look the same according to Eddie. Eddie gets that who you are is not shaped solely by where you are. The forces that control us are the same in New York, Cleveland, Florida, and Budapest. Twice, Eddie talks about how beautiful a place--Cleveland, Florida--is and responds to "Have you been there?" with a "No." During the scene in a car where you can see the person operating the camera in the rearview mirror for a length of time that almost made me uncomfortable--seriously, he's got like the fifth most screen time in the movie--Eddie asks is Cleveland looks like Budapest. He knows though. You can't escape your circumstances, Eddie and Willie, and there are horse and dog races all over the place. And I love that this movie is bookended with planes.

Don't get me wrong. Watching this movie is not a bleak experience, and I think it's a little funnier every time I see it. "It's Screaming Jay Hawkins and he's a wild man so bug off" gets me every time, and a scene in a movie theater might be one of the funniest scenes without dialogue ever. It's not comedy for everybody, but for me, it's a pretty special movie. Jarmusch almost invented his own film language, his own rhythm. It never really feels like the language and rhythm of real life--more like a fairy tale that Rammellzee could feel comfortable in--but it somehow ends up more authentic than real life. It's like real life stripped of its skin, and there's something so refreshing about that. And funny!

Ironically, the one reader who would most agree with me probably didn't read this because it's got too many paragraphs.