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MovieMail's Review
Opening with an epigraph drawn from Rimbaud’s 'Le bateau ivre' ("As I descended into impassable rivers/ I no longer felt guided by the ferryman."), Jim Jarmusch’s latest movie, The Limits of Control is itself a kind of impassable river, free of the ferryman’s guiding hand.
Isaach De Bankolé (identified in the credits as ‘the lone man’) is the hub around which the film amiably revolves, a smartly dressed black man who is dispatched on a mission in the opening moments of the film by two Frenchman that takes him from Madrid to Seville and, eventually, rural Almeria, each location offering Bankolé meetings, of sorts, along with ever more philosophical asides from the likes of Tilda Swinton, Gael Garcia Bernez, John Hurt and Bill Murray. Repetition and transit inform Bankolé’s journey, from the ritual opening of every conversation (‘You don’t speak Spanish, right?’) through to the helicopter that dogs his every step, the expresso he takes in two cups and the ritual touching of the air he performs each day.
In some respects a mash-up of earlier Jarmusch movies (both Deadman and Ghost Dog spring to mind) as much as a homage to other movies (Boorman’s Point Blank, Antonioni’s The Passenger), The Limits of Control is defiantly not for everyone – but for those willing to follow wherever Jarmusch takes them, this is essential viewing.
The Limits of Control is Jim Jarmusch's teasing and imaginative celebration of the artifice of cinema and how it influences our view of the world.
A mysterious loner and outlaw (Isaach De Bankole) makes his meandering journey through the varied landscapes of southern Spain, subsisting solely on double espressos and the regular practice of T'ai Chi. Along the way he is handed small pieces of paper contained in matchboxes, each one symbolising a mode of expression - music, film, art, sex, drugs - each of which he absorbs but does not outwardly react to. John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, Gael Garcia Bernal and Bill Murray are among the actors who appear in cameo roles.
