Famous Insanity

Coffee and Cigarettes
Dir. Jim Jarmusch

“Coffee and Cigarettes” has to be Jim Jarmusch's finest work to date, since creating a stir with the now cult classics “Down by Law” and “Mystery Train.” What started as a short film for “Saturday Night Live” back in 1986, with Steven Wright and Roberto Benigni having an absurd conversation over coffee and cigarettes, reeled off into what I would consider to be this filmmaker's magnus opus.

As Jarmusch continued to explore the idea of various famous people (in and out of character), sitting down over coffee and cigarettes, it seems he has discovered some of life's most delectable and humorous little secrets.

His subject matter, for one, is beyond phenomenal. Imagine the sheer joy of eavesdropping on a conversation between Iggy Pop and Tom Waits in a seedy bar. This is where Pop heckles Waits to no end over the bar they sit in and the fact that his favorite watering hole doesn't have any of his songs on the jukebox. There is also the rare performance by Jack and Meg White (of The White Stripes), where they casually and cautiously chat about Nicola Tesla and the Tesla coil Jack has fashioned in the cafe. And then there is the classic skit of Steve Coogan dissing Alfred Molina over a cup of coffee, after Molina has discovered they could be long lost cousins. But perhaps the greatest moment comes with Cate Blanchett playing herself as well as her scrappy look-a-like cousin. Here Cate is primly sitting in a swanky hotel lounge during a press junket. Her jaded cousin, who is visiting her overly famous counterpart, seems slightly jealous. Cate tries to make it up to her by offering her expensive freebie cosmetics that were given to her, but her cousin responds with one of the most astute lines in the film. It goes something like this: “Isn't it funny that when you are poor you can't afford any of this, but when you are rich, it's all just given to you?”

Filmed completely in stark black and white, it is obvious that the look of the film ties itself together just as much as the theme. The director of photography, Don Decillo, who worked on Jarmusch's “Stranger than Paradise ,” connects each vignette with a series of patterns and mazes. Whether it's a chessboard, a checkered tablecloth, a floor or intricate molding, Jarmusch and company assemble the quirky insanity like a tightly wrapped cinematic package. Whether you are a Jarmusch fan or not, this is a film not to be missed.