The Limits of Control

City Paper Grade: C

by Shaun Brady

Teresa Isasi HIT IT: Isaach de Bankolé is the Lone Man in Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

[City Paper Grade : C]

"Sometimes I like it in films when people just sit there, not saying anything," says Tilda Swinton to Isaach de Bankolé, midway through an oblique conversation in a film almost entirely composed of them. It's a line that on its own suggests a touch of mocking self-awareness on the part of writer/director Jim Jarmusch, but it arises in the midst of a piece that is otherwise so constricted by Jarmusch's usual trademarks — the emotionless delivery, static cameras, deadpan absurdities — that it can barely breathe, let alone laugh at itself. De Bankolé, identified only as "The Lone Man," is a mysterious figure, identifiable as a hit man chiefly by movie-cliché signifiers, whose mission leads him through a series of mysterious encounters in Spain. Each meeting takes the form of a disquisition on film or music or science, recited by a series of eccentric contacts who relay information to the stone-faced hired gun. In his downtime, he fixes his unchanging demeanor on a series of artworks, each hollowly echoing elements from the world outside. Through Jarmusch's eyes, the art doesn't expand upon the prosaic real world so much as both are hammered into the same blunt obscurantism. As the air of mystery gradually sours into a stubborn, self-echoing cycle, the film gazes ever more claustrophobically inward, choking on its own tail. Jarmusch is still capable of moments of austere beauty — the entire piece has the unreal sheen of a lucid dream, best captured by Swinton's confusion of cinematic memories and subconscious images, all overlaid by the electric haze of Japanese drone-rock band Boris. But in recent years he's reaped severely diminishing rewards from the obsessions that once marked him as a compellingly idiosyncratic director, as if trying to press wine from a raisin.