Jim Jarmusch is one of the undisputed stars of American independent cinema, who came out of the film school ecosystem in the early 1980s making these cool, sparse, almost experimental films, without much plot and even less action. Forty years later, he's still making them, and his style hasn't changed much. And it's taken me nearly that long to finally vibe with what he's doing. I use vibe deliberately, because I think the key to Jarmusch is that he's an accomplished musician, and his filmmaking is an extension of his musical tastes and impulses.
Jim Jarmusch films don't tell stories in the traditional sense. They have characters and settings. They have moods and themes. There are sometimes very precise patterns and rhythms of actions to be followed. However, the most vital parts of Jarmusch movies are the ones where nothing in particular seems to be happening - the lulls in conversation, the pauses in activity, or the moments where a character seems lost in contemplation, thinking or weighing options. Many of his films are collections of vignettes, where characters meet in various configurations, talk, and then separate. And it's only at the end, after having witnessed all these seemingly incidental moments and encounters, or having followed along on an aimless journey to nowhere in particular, that it becomes clear that something has been gained from the experience.
My favorite Jarmusch film is probably his most ambitious, filmed in five different cities, in four different primary languages, with a new cast and crew in each place. It's essentially five short films with nothing to tie them together except for a basic premise - a taxi driver picks up a passenger or passengers one night, and they converse to pass the time during the trip. The drivers and passengers are always strangers, often from very different walks of life, to keep things interesting. The idea is that all of these stories are happening on the same night, at the same time, in different places across the globe. This is "Night on Earth," where we start with a 7PM pickup at LAX airport in Los Angeles, and end in the suburbs of Helsinki roughly around 5:30 AM.
Initially the premise feels like a fussy gimmick, but what's so fun about "Night on Earth" is that each of the segments is completely distinct, and feels very loose, improvisational, and unconstrained. The direction taken by each of these stories feels largely driven by the performances, and there are some priceless ones here. My favorite segment is the one set in New York, where an immigrant cab driver named Helmut, who is new to the job and can barely operate his vehicle, picks up the profane, fast-talking Yo Yo, who decides to drive the cab himself from Manhattan to Brooklyn, with Helmut as his passenger. Yo Yo and Helmut are played by Giancarlo Esposito and Armin Mueller-Stahl, two performers with completely different energies and performance styles, who nonetheless play off each other wonderfully, especially when you throw Rosie Perez into the mix as Yo Yo's combative sister-in-law.
Then there's the sexier, more mysterious Paris segment, where Isaach de Bankole's cab driver picks up a fiercely independent blind woman played by Beatrice Dalle as his fare, and the color barrier means nothing, but the difference in life experience means everything. There's the awkwardness of the Los Angeles segment with Winona Ryder and Gena Rowlands, where the artifice is laid on thick, but it's hard not to get invested in the characters anyway. And there's the Roman segment, the most blatantly comedic part of the movie, where a motormouthed driver played by Roberto Benigni takes a poor priest on the wildest ride of his life. And for a final note of existential melancholy, to help put everything into perspective, naturally we head to the frozen climes of Helsinki for a very sober Matti Pellonpaa to ferry home a trio of drunks as the sun comes up.
Much of the music in the film was composed and performed by Tom Waits, who is one of Jarmusch's most frequent collaborators and appears in several of his films as an actor. And as in all of Jarmusch's films, the music is half of the experience, setting the tone and the rhythm of each scene, and helping to define the tenor of each interaction as much as each of the five taxicabs define the physical spaces the camera and characters inhabit. The steady beats of the nocturnal base accompany each transition in space and time, one of the only constants in the film.
"Night on Earth" is not a piece of media to explain, but to inhabit, where we have an opportunity to share in these chance encounters with the characters, and see how barriers are crossed and common ground is reached - or at least sought out - in every circumstance. I think I love this film because it's so optimistic about human beings and human nature - the way that it captures our ability to find connections in unlikely places.
And I get to enjoy a good, long drive without actually having to do any driving.
What I've Seen - Jim Jarmusch
Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
Down By Law (1986)
Mystery Train (1989)
Night on Earth (1991)
Dead Man (1995)
Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai (1999)
Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)
Broken Flowers (2005)
The Limits of Control (2009)
Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
Paterson (2016)
The Dead Don't Die (2019)
Father Mother Sister Brother (2026)
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