Jim Jarmusch's
Mystery Train is an easy-going ramble of a film graced by an
amusing and likeable ensemble of players. The director doesn't take his static long-take
style to the extreme of the minimalist
Stranger than Paradise, a film that can
resemble a collection of moving, talking figures trespassing in a series of still
images.
Mystery Train takes as its theme the mystique of Memphis and the Elvis Presley
cult. Its three overlapping stories all take place on one lazy night, and involve
foreigners experiencing America as a strange land. "Far From Yokohama" follows young
rock 'n' roll tourists Mitsuko and Jun (Youki Kudoh & Masatoshi Nagase) as they cross
the country on an Amtrak train and then drag their luggage through a depressed section
of town in search of Graceland. Mitsuko worships Elvis while Jun favors Carl Perkins.
They come by accident upon the former home of Sun Records, the storefront recording
studio in which their favorites were recorded. It doesn't matter that they can't follow
a word of the chirpy tour guide's rushed spiel, because they're looking only to
celebrate their preconceived notion of an America dedicated to rock 'n' roll. They end
up in a creaky hotel, where the Night Clerk and Bellboy (Screamin' Jay Hawkins &
Cinqué Lee) provide a sort of deadpan comedy relief.
"A Ghost" introduces us to Luisa (Nicoletta Braschi of
Life is Beautiful), a
widow stuck in Memphis overnight awaiting a flight back to Italy. She must deal with
various minor predators, including a creep in a diner (Tom Noonan) who tells her an
"Elvis sighting" story and then expects to be paid. Luisa gravitates to the same hotel.
To avoid more problems she shares a room with the upset, penniless Dee Dee (Elizabeth
Bracco) -- and in the middle of the night experiences her own ghostly encounter.
"Lost in Space" gives us Johnny (Joe Strummer of the punk band The Clash), an Englishman
who has just broken up with Dee Dee. Johnny has also just been laid off from his job,
and is getting drunk and dangerous in a local bar when his best friend Will Robinson
(Rick Aviles), and Dee Dee's brother, Charlie the Barber (Steve Buscemi) arrive to take
him home. The trio instead cruise the dark streets until a run-in with a racist liquor
store clerk turns violent.
Knowing fans will immediately respond to the notable music talent in the film's cast, a
habit Jim Jarmusch's films share with Jonathan Demme's around this time.
Mystery
Train takes its relaxed tempo from songs by the likes of Presley, Rufus Thomas,
Junior Parker and Roy Orbison. Some viewers will find the pace too slow but the luminous
images of cinematographer Robby Müller are rewarding in themselves. Only after the
start of the film's second story do we realize that the tales are happening on the same
Tuesday night. Luisa walks the same streets as do Jun and Mitsuko, only an hour or so
later. The Japanese tourists pass characters from the later stories, and everybody hears
the same gunshot in the hotel. Although the three stories occupy the same space, the
characters mostly remain oblivious to each other. They also share 'legendary space" with
the film's other "character", the ghost of Elvis Presley. Mitsuko and Jun have come from
the other side of the world just to pick up his vibrations, while Englishman Johnny
resents being given the nickname "Elvis" by his friends. The sensible Luisa seemingly
has no connection to the Elvis mystique, yet receives a visitation as if she were a
candidate for rock 'n' roll sainthood, a Bernadette of Memphis.
The film's loose structure offers plenty of opportunities for Jim Jarmusch's characters
to "behave". The optimistic Mitsuko brightens when a Tennessean addresses her with a
Japanese word. She playfully tries to get the outwardly emotionless Jun to break a
smile. One familiar still shows both of their faces smeared with lipstick. The other
characters have more conventional interplay, with Dee Dee spilling her heartaches to
Luisa and Johnny's two drunken friends trying to cheer him up. Connecting all three
stories are the discreet Night Clerk and the insecure bellboy. The two employees regard
the variety of hotel guests without judging them.
Because of the shared characters and hotel setting, we keep expecting
Mystery
Train's stories to eventually dovetail and bring its characters together. That
construction has become its own convention and cliché, particularly after the
scattershot omnibus format employed by Quentin Tarantino later in the 1990s. But Jim
Jarmusch makes no move in that direction, preferring to link his characters with
miracles of a more everyday kind. In the middle of the night, everyone turns on his or
her radio at the same time, experiencing the Elvis song "Blue Moon" as yet another
mysterious shared experience.
Criterion's
Blu-ray of
Mystery
Train gives us Robby Müller's expressive images in a glowing HD transfer. The
movie is a musical showcase, a fact stressed in the disc extras produced by Susan
Arosteguy. The best item on board is a featurette about the depressed area of Memphis
chosen as the film's locations, and the legacy of the music that was made there. Several
witnesses to the music heyday of the neighborhood share memories of the times, including
one man who remembers how Sun Records impresario Sam Phillips dropped all of his black
artists as soon as Elvis and other white performers came on the scene.
A gallery of on-set photos is included as well. In lieu of a conventional commentary,
director Jarmusch answers reader questions in an audio extra. His answers are polite,
thorough, and very slow. The late Screamin' Jay Hawkins appears in an excerpt from a
docu-bio, talking about his filmmaking experience. Hawkin's dynamic song
I Put a
Spell on You has seen soundtrack use in many movies. As Jarmusch explains in his Q&A
session, when he licensed the recording for
Stranger in Paradise he discovered
that Hawkins had no rights to his own work and would not see any of the money. The
director saw to it that the musician was paid a separate fee.
For more information about
Mystery Train, visit
The Criterion Collection. To order
Mystery
Train, go to
TCM Shopping.
by Glenn Erickson
