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By PAUL BRENNER
Jim Jarmusch's "neo-beat-noir-comedy," made after his proto-punk "Honeymooners" art-house hit,
"Stranger Than Paradise," has been released by The Criterion Collection in a shimmering, digitally remastered, two-disc
edition.
There is an old Vanguard record album called "The Great Blues Men" with a cover collage by Eric Von Schmidt that conveys
an imaginary world of seedy backroom blues -- crumpled dollar bills, tangled Black Diamond Strings, ripped and yellowed
photographs of Mississippi John Hurt, Howlin' Wolf, and Son House. In "Down By Law," Jarmusch achieves the same effect
through half remembered bits of film styles and fragments -- incorporating influences as diverse as prison films, film
noir, Stanley Kramer, Buster Keaton, Werner Herzog, and Jacques Rivette -- filtered through his deadpan comic
sensibility to create a hardboiled, comic fantasy world.
It is also another Jarmusch fish-out-of-water tale, with Tom Waits and John Lurie as two downtown hipsters transplanted
into the alien and seedy world of back street New Orleans. After they are separately framed for crimes they did not
commit, they are dropped as if from the sky into a dank, monotone prison cell, hating each other and their plight. But
things take a different turn when Roberto Begnini (playing the character of Roberto) is also deposited into their cell.
Even more of an out-of-towner than Lurie and Waits, Begnini is an Italian tourist who can barely speak English (after
getting a nasty once over by the boys, Begnini reads from his phrase book, "If looks could keel, I am a de-dead now").
And Begnini's manic positivism makes his cellmates even more irritated and surly. There are the set pieces of any prison
picture -- the escape (so downplayed, the three inmates just leave), the flight through the brush (in this case, the
bayou) -- but Jarmusch is not so much interested in plot points as character interaction, whether it be Waits doing DJ
riffs in the prison cell, Begnini drawing a window on the cell wall "to look at," Begnini cooking a rabbit and talking
to himself, or the cellmates causing the entire prison block to shout out "I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice
cream." In a high ctane cinema world, Jarmusch is one of those rare and caring directors who are not afraid to stop the
action for minutes at a time just to observe his characters or listen to them talk.
The set features an extensive compendium of extras -- Jarmusch, in a "disembodied voice," reflecting on the film, the
theatrical trailer, an interview with cinematography Robby Muller, a section on the film's premiere at Cannes (the press
conference and an interview with John Lurie) the interview replete with Lurie audio commentary eighteen years later),
fifteen outtakes and an alternate ending, a Tom Waits music video from 1989 with additional audio musings by Jarmusch,
Jarmusch reading cards and letters sent to him, production Polaroids, and behind-the-scenes stills. Also included was
telephone calls placed to Tom Waits, Roberto Begnini, and John Lurie, talking about the film. The funniest phone call
moment occurs during the conversation with Waits as Jarmusch recalls Paul Ruebens (aka Pee Wee Herman) inexplicably
arising from the midnight shadows of the Louisiana swamp, unshaven and with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth. Waits
remarks that Ruebens's sudden appearance was as out of-place as "Jackie Gleason in Tibet" -- the perfect analogy for
"Down By Law." |
