Night on Earth - 1991 - Jim Jarmusch

Five cities, four countries, five taxi drivers and their passengers. Jim Jarmusch's nocturnal Night on Earth is simple to condense into a single line synopsis, but much harder to explain in terms of mood. Throughout the course of one night we are driven through five cities - Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome and Helsinki - in five different moments of time. During this time we see five different situations where human beings, who otherwise would have never met, share a connection.

The narratives within the five vignettes are simple, but individually unique. In Los Angeles, a casting agent, Victoria Snelling (Giancarlo Esposito) tries to convince her driver, sassy tomboy Corky (Winona Ryder) that she may be perfect for a movie she is casting. In New York, East-German immigrant and former circus clown, Helmut (Armin Mueller-Stahl) picks up streetwise YoYo (Giancarlo Esposito) who, after realising Helmut cannot drive a car with an automatic transmission, ends up escorting Helmut around New York. In Paris, a driver from the Ivory-Coast (Isaach de Bankolé) kicks out two drunks (African diplomats) for being rude to him, only to act rudely towards his next passenger, a blind woman (Béatrice Dalle). In Rome, Gino (Roberto Benigni) picks up a Priest, to whom Gino insists on "confessing" all his bizarre sexual encounters, unaware that the priest is having a heart attack in his cab. Lastly, in Helsinki, after his passengers try to tell Mika (Matti Pellonpää), the driver, about the bad day that their inebriated friend had, Mika tells them a story so sad it puts their friend's story to shame.

Whether dealing with cities in his country of birth, or foreign countries; Jarmusch is a poet of the night. Since he began making films, with his debut Permanent Vacation in 1980, Jarmusch seems to understand how human beings shift in their attitudes and behaviour once night creeps in. Tom Waits' score and whiskey and tar-stained vocals help to create Jarmusch's desired mood, as his vocal range and jaunty music underscore the darkly humorous tone and nighttime setting. 

Jarmusch has never been interested in telling a cohesive story, instead favouring conversational mood pieces and characters, as each vignette has no obvious construction. The driver picks up a customer or customers, they start talking, the driver drops them off. However, within this time frame a chemistry has formed which would not have happened had they not got into that taxi. For example, In the Los Angeles vignette, Corky tells her passenger how she loves driving taxis and how she dreams that one day she can be a mechanic. Victoria, her passenger, listens and seems sincerely happy that Corky can find such peace driving taxis at night. Later, as Corky drops her off, Victoria asks her whether she wants to be in a movie she is casting, only for Corky to turn her down. However, by this point, Corky and Victoria's personalities are so in tune that Victoria understands, and is probably rather grateful that Corky turned this opportunity down. In the Paris vignette, the nameless driver asks his blind passenger how she knows what sex is like if she has been robbed of one of her five senses. She goes on to explain how she feels sex with her entire being; not just with sight. The driver is perplexed, and honestly jealous that with four senses his passenger will feel and sense things with an intensity he cannot imagine. 

These are just two examples of a film brimming with a deep, humanist subtext. Although, unfortunately, with anything which is  episodic in its narrative structure there will always be the problem that some stories are better than others. The Los Angeles vignette, for example, while good, is only a taster of what is to come. The New York story, shows how human kindness knows no national boundaries. When German immigrant, Helmut picks up streetwise black-youth, Yoyo, things look like they could not be bleaker. Helmut keeps stalling his cab due to the fact that he does not know how to drive an automatic vehicle. Yoyo decides he will drive himself home with Helmut as his passenger. During this time Yoyo and Helmut bond and, while he may not know this at the time, Yoyo teaches Helmut how to be a better cabbie. Throughout the film, unique friendships are born and then lost as soon as the passenger steps out of the cab, but due to Jarmusch's writing, these friendships will last so much longer not only in the memory of the audience but also (we feel) in the lives of the characters.

The performances are uniformly excellent with Robert Benigni's Gino being a standout. His foul tales of sexual depravity are hilarious, and a marvel of comic timing. Unfortunately, Winona Ryder's Corky is probably the least convincing, but that is only because the rest of the cast are so good. Frederick Elmes' photography is simply gorgeous and, along with Tom Waits' score, underscores the movie's tone. Perhaps not Jarmusch's best known film, but one where Jarmusch continues his interest in and empathy with the human condition.

8/10

Istanbul - 1985 - Marc Didden

We have all seen films and heard folk songs about lonesome drifters; wandering through an unknown land, aimlessly travelling from place to place. These travellers are often thought of as romantic poets of the road, stopping only to read beat poetry in little cafes. However, what is the reality of these men of the road? Would these men be seen as romantics if we knew their backstory, or why they are in such a desperate need to run away from society? Or would we discover something darker and, frankly, more interesting?

Our story opens with Martin Klamski (Brad Dourif) who, while travelling through Belgium, on his way to Istanbul, befriends a waiter named Willy (Dominique Deruddere) when he saves him from a fight with an angry customer. They get drunk together and Martin invites him to travel to Istanbul with him, since Martin needs to be there for “business” in a week anyway. Willy accepts the offer and they begin hitchhiking. During the time that Willy is in Martin’s company Martin keeps himself very much to himself, never revealing too much and often contradicting himself. For example, he first he tells Willy he needs to be in Istanbul next week, then later it is next month and later still he says it won’t matter if he arrives a week late. There is also the matter of Martin’s strange behaviour. He refuses to sleep in hotels, his reasoning being that, “They smell”. He won’t travel in trains, again, because “They stink” so he insists on hitchhiking. Later, when a woman picks them up and takes them to a hotel to have sex with them Willy happily indulges himself but Martin locks himself in the bathroom, listening to what is happening with great discomfort. He begins moaning and rolling back and forth in physical pain.

While the film is fairly strong on characterisation of the two men, the plot is paper thin. Martin and Willy move from one area or another, they meet an eccentric local, they move on and do the same thing elsewhere. Where the film is perhaps strongest is when it deconstructs the myth of the American drifter: often painted as romantic or poetic by the likes of Jack Kerouac, country musicians and films such as Easy Rider (1969). Here, Martin is shown as psychologically imbalanced and possibly very dangerous. It helps that Dourif’s pale skin and skeletal frame are hardly a vision of mythic beauty; especially with his long, stringy hair, bulging blue eyes and oversized coat. After he and Willy leave the hotel they go to a street festival, where Martin enthusiastically grabs a guitar and jumps on stage to sing Movin’ in the Wind, for an enthusiastic crowd. It is a typical, romanticised song of drifting and being on the road which would put Bob Dylan to shame. However, like Martin’s unsettling appearance and demeanour, there is something less romantic and more sinister to the way he sings about being a typical American drifter. It just comes across more as a front the longer he keeps it up.

Regarding the performances, Brad Dourif plays Martin with all the intensity and unsettling itchiness you would expect from him. He is a disturbed man with many demons, and it is to Dourif's credit that he does not overplay the monstrous aspects of Martin's mind. Instead, he plays him as someone who - physically - cannot stop doing evil things. During the second act, Willy finds a newspaper clipping in Martin's wallet referring to a slain immigrant child living in London, Martin admitted that he murdered someone in London, but he insisted it was an adult man. Martin is travelling to Istanbul to visit the family of the child, possibly to attempt to redeem himself but it is only implied, never explicitly said. It is made apparent that Martin is a predator, and the violence he has inflicted on children in the past is sexually motivated.

Brad Dourif, being one of the more eccentric and strange character actors of the 1970s and 80s plays Martin just on the right side of bizarre. Invoking a man who is traumatised by his psychological sexual disorders but will still allow his twisted mind to get the better of him, despite his self knowledge. In the third act, Martin and Willy encounter a mechanic who asks Martin and Willy to kidnap his daughter from his wife, who has run away with her and an Italian cafe owner. They are to take the girl to a cottage to hide out before delivering her to a train station in Luxembourg. There, the mechanic will pay for their way to Istanbul. While in the cottage, Martin's attraction towards the mechanic's daughter is apparent, and Dourif's balance of self-loathing and sinister predator make for a truly itchy, unsettling performance. It is the conviction of Dourif's fine work here that stops the film from collapsing under the weight of its rather weak story, and the film ultimately rests on his shoulders.

Dominique Deruddere as Willy is less good, but this is at least understandable considering that Deuruddere was a Belgian filmmaker with no history of acting. Willy is the voice of the audience, attempting to unravel the mystery behind Martin and his need to get to Istanbul. However, it is somewhat unsettling how nonchalantly he accepts the kidnapping plot. Perhaps if more attention had been given towards his character we may have understood his motivations and why he would follow the obviously unstable Martin. However, his character is left in the shadow of Martin's and  he never comes across as truly fleshed out.

On the technical side, the film is unfortunately fairly poor. The quality of the sound often crackles and pops, especially during louder scenes, and the photography is uninteresting to say the least. This is partly to do with the undisciplined and erratic way in which emerging Belgian filmmakers often made films during the early to mid eighties. To put it into context, Belgian filmmaking had only really gained in popularity with Belgian audiences after the early sixties. These early films were often stagey and stilted, so by the early eighties, during the brief boom of emerging filmmaking talent, of which Didden was a part, they almost purposefully made films with a rough look and sound. However, no matter how well intentioned this is, this is a misery for the audience.

It is also unfortunate that the film feels like a compromised version of Didden's first film, Brussels by Night (1983), which was fairly well known in Europe during the early 80s. It also briefly put Didden on the map as one of the most important filmmakers to come out of Belgium at the time. So Istanbul feels like an attempt to do the same thing, except for American audiences. Hire an American actor of moderate cult popularity (Brad Dourif) and hopefully an audience will follow. This, unfortunately backfired as the film failed to get American or even British distribution. This film is for enthusiasts of Belgian cinema and Brad Dourif completists only.

6/10

The Ninth Configuration (Twinkle, Twinkle "Killer" Kane) - 1980 - William Peter Blatty

Towards the end of the Vietnam War, men with little or no history of mental illnesses or psychosis suddenly have mental breakdowns. Arousing suspicion from the US Military, they decide to house them in "Centre 18", a gothic castle converted into a psychiatric hospital. A brilliant, unorthodox psychiatrist, Colonel Vincent Kane (Stacey Keach), arrives to find the men running rampant and disobeying the orders from Major Marvin Groper (Neville Brand), who has been given the thankless task of caring for these men. 

With the assistance of Medical Officer Colonel Fell (Ed Flanders), Colonel Kane's unorthodox methods to let the disturbed men play out their every mad raving, with no control or restraint, will eventually lead to him diagnosing whether they are mentally stable or not. However, if they are not, then he hopes that this "blowing off steam" of theirs will lead to their cure. During this time he allows Lt. Frankie Reno (Jason Miller) to put on an all dog production of Hamlet, allows Major Nammack (Moses Gunn) to wear a Superman costume and allows the men to stage a mock breakout similar toThe Great Escape; with the entire hospital staff all dressed as members of The Gestapo.

With the first half of the film being farcical and comedic in tone, and the last half becoming more of a psychological melodrama, dealing with themes of religion, psychosis, human suffering and the importance of faith, the tone never comes across as overbearing or preachy. To begin with the disturbed military men seem to be fairly obviously false. They attend roll call in a circle, rather than in a straight line and shout out lines from movies rather than calling out their names. However, when the men are left to their own devices, they seem genuinely disturbed. What, for example, could turn astronaut Captain Billy Cutshaw (Scott Wilson), who aborted a mission to the Moon moments before takeoff, from a Harpo Marx prankster to an aggressive man questioning the existence of God?

It is this debate which drives the last half of the film. As Colonel Kane opens himself to Captain Cutshaw, they find themselves discussing faith. Cutshaw explains that he aborted his mission because there is nothing other than what we can see and perceive, and that God cannot exist if pain and misery also exists. Kane, a religious church going man argues that God's existence can be seen in everything beautiful in the world and in examples of human self-sacrifice. Eventually Cutshaw asks for a real life example from Kane, which Kane cannot give.

This is not only an example of the characters' beliefs on faith playing out, but Blatty's. As the second part in his "trilogy of faith" (bookended by The Exorcist in 1973 and The Exorcist III: Legion 1990), Blatty's own faith has been at the forefront of his work as a novelist and as a filmmaker for his entire career. His script is blisteringly witty and scabrously satirical, delving into matters of the soul and the mind. 

Cutshaw begins to believe that Kane himself is the one who deserves to be a patient at the hospital, and the longer we see him slowly unraveling, the more we believe this could be true. Stacey Keach plays Colonel Kane as almost catatonically calm, never batting an eyelid to all the craziness he allows the patients to indulge in. However, moments of rage give way to something darker lurking somewhere beneath the surface. On the other hand, Captain Cutshaw, despite his numerous psychologically invoked outbursts, comes across as the one who is the most sane. The darkness in Kane's soul finally bursts out when a new patient arrives who Kane recognises. This leads to secrets being revealed that were long stored away and Kane's bubbling rage bursts out as explosive, unrestrained violence.

While the ensemble cast play off each other well, boasting talented character actors like Robert Loggia, Moses Gunn and Ed Flanders, it is Keach and Wilson who are the strongest. Their performances are nothing short of masterful and rank amongst some of the most underrated of the decade. Blatty's writing and direction is fantastic, balancing humour and pathos with an unrivalled knowledge of religion and psychology, especially in terms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Gerry Fisher's photography is also effective, shooting the castle in a smoky, low angled fashion invoking the memories of classic gothic literature.  A film to seek out and treasure.

9/10

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