Jim Jarmusch
Coffee and Cigarettes

The year was 2003, and reviewers worldwide were scratching at windows in an attempt to climb up. This only served to confirm the genius of Jarmusch (and, consequently, the idiocy of those who praised him).

"Coffee and Cigarettes", born as a collage of shorts (the first of which dates back to '86), is a non-film. Let me explain: when we decide to escape the gray reality by picking up a book or going to the cinema, we desire a story. No, I know, it's reductive. In reality, we don't ask so little: we want a well-constructed plot, we want interesting characters, we want an engaging style, we want to awaken some latent feeling, we want a new point of view from which to reflect... but in general, we tend to be satisfied even when only one of these aspects is highlighted.

So, if someone asked me what this film is about, I would answer: people drink coffee and smoke cigarettes sitting at a table. Period. And then? Period.

"Coffee and Cigarettes" is a film without a plot. The short films follow one another with no guiding thread other than a checkered tablecloth or a coffee cup; the characters, anonymous and with nothing to say, agonize in discussions as watered down as the coffee they gulp down. The fixed camera doesn't spare the long and annoying moments of silence. It's impossible to feel any sensation in front of these scenes overflowing with apathy. Impossible to seek a point of reflection among dialogues devoid of meaning, devoid of punch. What strikes most is that probably if we sat in a bar and started eavesdropping on who is sitting at the next table, we would surely hear something more interesting. The film materializes into a gigantic prank on the viewer, who in the end is forced to invent a meaning to attribute to the last 96 minutes of life. And Jarmusch meanwhile laughs and rubs his hands at the thought of the box office takings. Some of the director’s friends participate in this great joke: a Benigni all smoke and no fire, a Tom Waits all grimaces and no substance (we are far from the days of Down by Law, alas), to which we add a first-rate cast: standouts are Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, Steve Buscemi, Alfred Molina... not to mention the participation of members of the American music scene (besides the already mentioned Waits) Iggy Pop, Meg and Jack White of the White Stripes, GZA and RZA of the Wu Tang Clan... all together passionately exchanging banalities and vacant looks in front of the fixed, insistent shots. An aggressively boring film, or worse, disappointing.

And here's the critics flailing: "a film about the pleasures of life" (or how to reduce the pleasures of life to two stupid dependencies, moreover not even that interesting compared to drugs or alcohol), "a minimalist film" (a euphemism to hide the fact that the director has nothing to say), "a film representing a human reality..." (no human reality is as banal and predictable as that of the film), "with peaks of surrealism and truly amusing moments" (both absent). If nothing else, this film brought out the best of cinematic journalism imagination.

An excellent film for fake connoisseurs with bottle-bottom glasses, for radical chic who revel in black & white (very retro but in this case a bit too out of place, almost kitsch), and for young, pretentious filmmakers with brains as empty as the offering box. It makes you wonder if the same screenplay directed by any director, performed by semi-unknown actors, would have had the same success in the international film scene. In my humble opinion, I think not.