Jim Jarmusch
Coffee and Cigarettes

Some people like large group scenes, some prefer sketches. Some love Guernica and others the Mona Lisa, some prefer Raphael’s frescoed rooms, others love portraits.

Well, Coffee and Cigarettes is a film that might appeal to the latter in each of these pairs. This film is a collection of sketches or short films, as they are commonly called, which Jim Jarmusch shot at different times from 1986 to 2003, the year of its theatrical release, winning awards at Cannes and at festivals scattered here and there around the globe.

And I, exactly in 2003, saw this film in a cinema in Cagliari that I have already mentioned here (Kitchen Stories - Bent Hamer - review (debaser.it)), in that same period of my life. This film was part of a series of award-winning films from various international film festivals. Films that rarely found space in the various multiplexes on the Italian peninsula and its islands. I liked it quite a bit, so in recent days I’ve decided to watch it again.

Here are my impressions:

And if we removed action from a film, what would remain?

Yes, because the plot of Coffee and Cigarettes doesn’t exist. Simply, there’s a camera observing entertainers amusing themselves around a small table, drinking lots of coffee and smoking many cigarettes. That’s all.

So, what remains?

The images (strictly in black and white), the music, the (often) disconnected words, and the pauses.

The pauses, those hated pauses eliminated from almost all narratives. Have you ever found yourself wondering, while reading a book or watching a film, how delicate and exceptional, coherent and rational, the dialogues you were facing were? Believing what was being shown to you, "what a beautiful thought, how interesting, witty, subtle, profound their minds are, how agile their words are," your soul, your spirit, flashed with reflected light.

But reality isn’t like this.

(My) reality is made of inaction, of barely sketched thoughts, of inconclusive dialogues, of finding refuge in messing around, of silences. (By the way, how much we miss that inaction now that we carry an electronic prosthesis attached to our hand?)

(My) reality is more akin to this film.

The (famous) silences that create awkward moments, like those of Mia Wallace and Vincent Vega, there they are, on stage; but also the silences stemming from words that create awkwardness... Around the table we observe: Benigni and Steven Wright engaging in a surreal dialogue about coffee, a dialogue that leads to a sudden role reversal and concludes in an exchange of appointments which sees Benigni going to the dentist in place of Steven (“How lucky!” comments Roberto). We see two twins and a waiter (Steve Buscemi) in Memphis discussing Elvis Presley in a narrative that sways between myth and history. We see Iggy and Tom Waits debating the freedom to smoke a cigarette once a person has quit the habit and toying with their careers between vanity and envy: in the end, there’s no room for the two of them in the Juke Box selections. We witness the envy between Cate Blanchett and her cousin, masked by pleasantries and good manners. And then we see Jack and Meg from the White Stripes, some members of the Wu-tang Clan, and others filling the silent gaps in every relationship by talking about society’s millennial fetishes: coffee and cigarettes.

Like in the dialogue between Iggy and Tom:

“Notice, we are the coffee and cigarettes generation, if you think about it. While those from the ‘40s were the cake and coffee generation.”

“Like Abbott and Costello, the ones from TV, those two always wanted cake and coffee.”

“Yes, yes, like Abbott and Costello, they always ordered cake and coffee, remember: 'Come on! Have a coffee, eat a piece of cake! Don’t stand on ceremony!’”

SILENCE