Stranger than Paradise

Stranger than Paradise lives up to its title. It's strange all right. It's like an impenetrable, boring, morose, deadpan strange trip to Cleveland, New York City, and Florida. And that be exactly what writer/director Jim Jarmusch was going for. If so, Bravo! Still, the film left me wanting ol' Roberto Benigni from Down by Law to waltz in with his zaniness and liven up the joint.

Instead, I got the droll, monotone comedy and silence of John Lurie, Eszter Balint, Richard Edson. Lurie plays Willy, whose cousin Eva, played by Eszter Balint, from Hungary comes to visit during a stop on a trip to Cleveland, Ohio. When she leaves, a year passes before Willy and his pal Eddie, played by Richard Edson, drive out to Cleveland and rescue Eva from a cold winter and boring nights at home with Willy's aunt (a deadpan, monotone, very foreign, and funniest performance by Cecillia Stark). When they get to Flordia, they discover Florida isn't the Paradise they expected it to be. A series of comical miscommunication and misunderstandings follow.

John Lurie is an actor I'd prefer not to see in movies again. He is as bland as they come. Even when conveying emotion, he's lifeless. Any laughs from the film are hard to come by because the comical moments are so underplayed that it's hard to know if they're even supposed to be funny. So, instead of natural reactions of laughter, I did a lot of head scratching trying to figure out if things were funny or if I just needed to find something to laugh at to keep me going. Lurie is the chief culprit, but Jarmusch writes and directs moments engineered for this strange ambiguity of appropriate reaction.

Most of the time, my reaction was just looking at sometimes beautiful black and white cinematography and freeze framing shots in my mind (or literally with the pause button).

Like Down by Law, I don't really get the point or points if any that Jarmusch is trying to make. If his point is just to entertain, he failed me.

I can say that there is a big improvement from Stranger than Paradise (his first movie) to Down by Law (his next movie after that). I can only hope that if I see enough of his movies, his work might eventually improve to a completely enjoyable experience.

**