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Anyone who has ever been interested in Jim Jarmusch and his world will undoubtedly have encountered the "magic spark" at some point in their life. The spark in question is the thrill of existence, and excuse me if that sounds like a lot.
The cinema of the Akron director has the ability to capture on film those untranslatable portions of life, those empty spaces that lie along the path. Let's call them anonymous moments. They are all those instances to which we do not give much importance, but which occupy more than half of all the pieces in the existential puzzle. Let it be clear, this should not be seen as a pessimistic statement, but simply as a fact. Jarmusch starts from this, from the sense of absence inherent in existence: his ability lies in capturing the hidden side of those empty moments, photographing their melancholic soul, and extracting an unexpected hidden beauty.
Think of a director like Federico Fellini and a film like "8½": a simple succession of visions and a wonderful result, despite all its "incompleteness." Jarmusch similarly puts this strange and splendid reality on film, but prefers a more realistic approach to a "dreamlike" one. Fixed camera, reality is captured as it is, what matters is under which light it is presented.
The scenarios are the raw ones from the "backside" of the world: the sad American countryside, deserted streets in the dead of night, solitary car rides, the dark rooms of forgotten buildings. The inhabitants of these scenarios are quirky, magnetic, indecipherable characters. They are the so-called outsiders, with which reality overflows, and yet they seem to slide by hidden on the sidelines of other existences. They breathe within another world, suspended and dark, which in the end is an existing world, perhaps more true and physical than the so-called "normal" world. So we can say this: Fellini filtered reality through dreamlike images of his mind, while Jarmusch instead directly shows the "magic" portions of what surrounds us, which are there snoozing silently in all their simple physicality, already beautiful and ready...
"Down By Law" is probably one of the director's most beautiful films, and it revolves around the stories of three characters fantastically played by Tom Waits, John Lurie, and Roberto Benigni. Three lives like many others intersect in a remote and fascinating America. A DJ, a pimp, and an Italian immigrant. It's a story of troubles with the law (real or alleged), of an escape, of a friendship. Of someone trying to navigate under that strange artificial veil of reality that is institutions, the law, the rules. Who tries to survive but might also want to "live." And above all, it's a simple story, perhaps like reality, and this is where all its beauty lies.
Even more amusing for us Italians, thanks to Benigni's performance, who with his mangled English and his notebook where he methodically records American slang expressions just heard, is perhaps the true mysterious traveler of life: outsider among the outsiders.
I therefore quote Roberto Benigni from a scene in the film, lost who knows where: "It's a sad and beautiful world!...".
Well, this phrase IS the cinema of Jim Jarmusch.
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