Jarmusch is cinema\u2019s great hipster poet of inertia. One of my favorite stories that\u2019s passed into film school legend is that when he was at New York University studying under Rebel Without a Cause<\/em> director Nicholas Ray, Jarmusch turned in a script that the professor criticized for its lack of incident. The young student carefully considered Ray\u2019s critique, then turned in a revised draft in which even less happens. Ray ended up hiring Jarmusch his assistant and a close mentorship ensued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many years later, I had a professor at NYU who had been working there at the time. She was a wonderful teacher who was getting on in years and had a metal plate in her head that made her terrible with names. (She also couldn\u2019t stand too close to a microwave because she\u2019d forget what day it was.) She used to refer to Jarmusch as \u201cthe Hungarian.\u201d Now, Jim Jarmusch is not Hungarian. He\u2019s from Akron, Ohio, with parents of German-Irish and Czech descent. I think she was confusing him with the Hungarian characters in Stranger Than Paradise<\/em>. But it\u2019s also sort of understandable because he\u2019s a striking-looking dude with what could easily be read as an Eastern European affect, and Jarmusch has always maintained an outsider\u2019s perspective in his pictures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stranger Than Paradise, Down By Law <\/em>and Mystery Train<\/em> envision Hoboken, the Louisiana bayou, and downtown Memphis as vast and desolate wonders to be explored. In the latter two films he loves to let the camera track laterally along streets and roads, observing overgrown landscapes and gorgeously crumbling ruins. Shot by the legendary German cinematographer Robby Muller, Mystery Train<\/em> examines American iconography through the eyes of visitors, allowing us to see the fundamental strangeness of stuff we take for granted. It\u2019s no coincidence that the movie shares its Elvis Presley-inspired title with a Greil Marcus book in which the brainiest of rock critics wrote about \u201cthe old, weird America.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first chapter follows two young Japanese tourists who are positively besotted with mid-century U.S. pop culture. (For reasons psychologists would probably have a field day unpacking, the American \u201850s were all the rage in Japan during the \u201880s.) Played by the adorable Masatoshi Nagase and Y\u00fbki Kud\u00f4, the couple has made a pilgrimage to visit Graceland and Sun Studios. She\u2019s crazy about Elvis. He prefers Carl Perkins. They don\u2019t understand much of what anyone says, except for some guy at the train station played by soul icon Rufus Thomas. He speaks their language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The action — to use the term loosely — happens over one night at a cheap motel run by music legend Screamin\u2019 Jay Hawkins, who sits behind the counter in a blinding red suit, taunting a young bellhop for his lack of style. (He\u2019s played by Jarmusch\u2019s NYU classmate and Spike Lee\u2019s kid brother, Cinque.) The motel will also see the arrival of an Italian widow (Nicoletta Braschi) and her new friend who never stops talking (Elizabeth Bracco) as well as a handful of ne’er-do-well dudes trying to talk down their drunken mess of a pal (The Clash frontman Joe Strummer) who just lost his job and his girl and wants to take it out on the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In all three stories, all of these characters will hear local disc jockey Lee \u201cBaby\u201d Sims \u2013 the character Tom Waits played in Down by Law<\/em> \u2013 spinning Elvis\u2019 haunting cover of \u201cBlue Moon.\u201d A little later on, they\u2019ll all hear the same gunshot. But only one of them will see the ghost of Elvis Presley, who\u2019s pretty sure he\u2019s wandered into the wrong room. Mystery Train<\/em> is playful that way, using the overlapping incidents in the three stories not to make one of those grandiose \u201ceveryone is connected\u201d statements that became an easy way to get invited to the Oscars in the early 2000s, but rather to reflect how differently we all experience the same things. In other words, some people prefer Carl Perkins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019re all headed in the same direction, but everyone\u2019s in different compartments on this train. 16 coaches long. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “Mystery Train” is streaming on the Criterion Channel<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/mt2-1024x576.jpeg\")
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