The Limits of Control - A Jim Jarmusch Film
London Film Festival Screens Cult Director's Hitman Movie
Oct 24, 2009
After the relatively mainstream Broken Flowers (2005) director Jim Jarmusch returns to his iconoclastic roots with this deadpan hitman movie. Isaach De Bankole (White Material) stars as a taciturn loner on a mission in Spain to assassinate a rich, white Neo-con (Bill Murray). Along the way he encounters a variety of eccentric characters, each of whom has something for him.
Isaac de Bankole is The Lone Man
No character is given a name. The powerfully built De Bankole is The Lone Man. Those he meets up with exchange a box of matches with him and offer cryptic advice. Nude (Paz de la Heurta) is waiting in his hotel room and asks The Lone Man if he likes her ass. “Yes!” he emphatically replies in a rare show of emotion.
John Hurt and Gael Garcia Bernal also appear as characters called respectively Guitar and Mexican. Tilda Swinton makes the biggest impression as the Blonde. Jangling guitar music announces her arrival as if she was a character in a spaghetti western. She is wearing an outfit that makes her look like a futuristic cowgirl, with a cowboy hat and a white raincoat.
The Limits of Control and Point Blank
Jarmusch channels the spirit of another existential hitman movie, John Boorman’s Point Blank (1967). Jarmusch spends much of the movie showing De Bankole walking through buildings, or travelling to get to his destination. Like Lee Marvin he is physically imposing and looks great in a suit. There is even a suggestion it can be read as Point Blank is sometimes read, as taking place in the mind of the protagonist.
The Limits of Control and the Imagination
The Limits of Control may technically belong in the thriller category, but Jarmusch removes all the elements that make a film thrilling. The pacing is slow and Jarmusch’s use of repetition, through repeated lines of dialogue, to similar shots of De Bankole walking around. There are no action sequences save for a brief garrotting. This is an inaction movie, a mood piece, one that relies heavily on music and Christopher Doyle’s wonderful cinematography.
The Blonde is a film lover. She tells The Lone Man the best movies are those like dreams and you are never quite sure whether you saw or imagined them. The Limits of Control certainly fits into this category. Enjoying it requires the viewer to submit to its dream-like logic which may be a step too far for some. However it is easily Jim Jarmusch’s best work since the Johnny Depp western Dead Man back in 1995.
- The Limits of Control
- Starring Isaach De Bankole, Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray
- Written by Jim Jarmusch
- Directed by Jim Jarmusch
- Year 2009
- Running time 116 mins
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