Stranger than Paradise (1984)

Date: 02/10/08
DVD
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088184/

Stranger than Paradise.

     Stranger than Paradise is a remarkable film that belongs in no time that I personally can imagine; the film manages to both be ahead of it's time (as well as today's time, as far as I'm concerned) and yet still behind it in style. The editing, the story, the conclusion are all very modern by today's standards while the black and white cinematography, the soundtrack, and film-making are all very classical. These elements combine to make Stranger than Paradise an incredible experience unlike most others you'll ever have in the cinema.
     The characters themselves are interesting in their own rights. We have Willie, who came to America well before the film starts and has done his very best to hide his Hungarian roots; we have Eva, who comes to America for the first time in the film and like Willie is trying to escape from her original roots; and finally we have Eddie, whom is Willie's best friend and seemingly a 'pure' American (which the film interestingly pokes fun at, with Willie proclaiming that he is as much of an American as Eddie is). Having a European background, I was also quite smitten with the Aunt Loddie character, who seemed to embody the stereotypes of European aunts in all the right ways. The ways in which the characters interplay is endlessly fascinating; Eddie very obviously has a crush on Eva, but who knows what Eva's thinking? Does Willie care? Questions like this are left open to the viewer to interpret, as the film abandons any notion of Hollywood structure to let the characters play their story out on the screen in their own ways.
     Another aspect of the film that departed from Hollywood conventions was the editing; choosing to forgo any formal editing techniques, Jarmusch instead plays the film in a series of one take shots that fade from black when they begin and fade back to black when they end. This creates a distinct rhythm which at times felt almost like a pulse of sorts. Occasionally, music will transcend the space between scenes but it usually would finish as the scene was starting up. This technique definitely added another layer to the film for me, as did the cinematography. The cinematography was particularly interesting to me because no matter how drab the locations, no matter how dull the subject (Willie's NY apartment for example), every shot was composed well and added something to the scene, which in the end should probably be the goal of all good cinematography.
     All of the elements of Stranger than Paradise are firing on full cylinders. The film may at first deceive audiences with its inherent minimalism and its apparent lack of structure, but its from this very minimalism and lack of structure that structure itself is born and the film earns its heart and soul. The minimalism is the perfect counterpart to the characters, whom are the perfect counterpart to the story they play out so wonderfully.