When Jim Jarmusch released his second feature in 1984, it’s unlikely that audiences knew that an amorphous entity called “American indie film” was being redefined. But in retrospect, this little revolution seems beautifully obvious: Combine the downcast attitude of the forgotten urban bohemians of the 1980s with the formal techniques of the structuralist avant-garde. The impassive stare of the unmoving camera, taking in the aimless drift of Reagan-era hipsters, yielded Jarmusch’s first masterpiece, one of the first genuinely new gestures in New American Cinema since Cassavetes. We observe Willie (musician John Lurie) and his pal Eddie (Richard Edson) as they embrace inertia, struggling to re-establish their equilibrium as Eva (Eszter Balint, seen most recently on Louie) arrives unannounced from Hungary to crash at her cousin Willie’s place. The result is a slothlike contest of wills, as well as a testament to the universality of cool. MICHAEL SICINSKI
Director Spotlight: Stranger Than Paradise
