So You Won't Have To: The Limits of Control

"Bad movies happen to good directors. You'd think I would have learned that by now."

I took a bullet for all of you last night. It pains me to say it, as much of a supporter of Jim Jarmusch as I am, but I cannot in good conscience give a movie this a pass. The Limits of Control is a challenge to any cinephile to try and finish a film that builds and repeats for no reason, that peppers the already limited dialogue with pointless one-sided conversations about the derivation of the term "Bohemian", movies that show you what life was really like, and molecules floating together in space.

Since I hope none of you ever watch this film, I'm going to spoil everything. Believe me, that's not saying as much as you think it would.

To be kind, I'll call it a waste of time. The plot is so simple, I can describe it in one sentence:

A hitman is hired to kill an American businessman in Spain, but mostly he sits in cafes or doesn't sleep.

That's it. I guess if you need more specifics, the Lone Man (Isaach De Bankolé) exercises, drinks two cups of expresso, walks around, and periodically looks at art. We see every single contact he makes in every town, all of which begin with the code phrase "You don't speak Spanish, do you?" delivered in Spanish, no matter what the nation of origin of the contact.

Occasionally, Nude (Paz de la Huerta) tries to sleep with him. When she's not totally nude, she sometimes wears a clear raincoat. I could pretend this is an important plot development, but if you had to sit through this film, you'd realize that it means about as much as anything else that happens.

The Limits of Control is about repetition. Lone Man enters a town, goes to his apartment. The camera move is the same when he first arrives as when he leaves, every single time. He always orders two espressos in separate cups, both of which are for him. His contacts sit down, have some water, and talk for five minutes or so about art, philosophy, music, film, or science. The movie wants you to think this has something to do with Bill Murray's speech right before Lone Man kills him with a guitar string, but it doesn't.

From here on out, I'm going to include some notes I took during the film, embellished with my further thoughts:

"It's like he decided to remake Point Blank, but only the stylistic flourishes and without the story. Or A story. Just repetition for the sake of repetition."

Okay, so when The Limits of Control starts with Focus Features Presents a POINTBLANK Production, it's hard to ignore that kind of subtle reference. It's like having Lone Man fly on Lumiere Airlines. Sometimes I can let a reference-heavy movie slide, but The Limits of Control seems to think its the first film to do this, so instead of being maybe clever, it's obnoxious.

But back to Point Blank. I've seen Point Blank. Many times. I've even seen its remake, Payback. In both forms. I've seen Godard's Made in USA, which to be perfectly honest is more what The Limits of Control has in common with the Walker novels Point Blank and Made in USA are based on. Even Made in USA has more of a story than The Limits of Control.

Jarmusch borrows a number of visual cues from Point Blank, but for no reason. They're there just to say "see? it's like the scene in Point Blank where he comes in and she's in bed. Then he takes the gun away!" which is actually only reminiscent of what happens. Late in the film I realized that in some ways Isaach De Bankolé resembles Lee Marvin, particularly in the eyes and jawline. But The Limits of Control isn't actually like Point Blank in any way other than copying specific shots. One of them has a story and the other does not.

"There's something oddly amusing about the film existing for its own sake. Self serving, yes, but in a 'really? this is the movie?' way."

For the first hour (or what I thought was the first hour), I was kind of enjoying how shamelessly about itself The Limits of Control was. It's really all you can do, because there's not much else to invest in. But then it takes a turn, around the 45 minute mark (not even close to the halfway point, it turned out) or so, when Lone Man goes into a Spanish restaurant / club and listens to a song that is, verbatim, what the French guy with the French translator said at the beginning of the movie. Then you realize that Jarmusch is actually going to try shoehorning meaning into this masturbatory exercise in cinema.

"Jarmusch just cut from the Lone Man looking at a city skyline to the same shot of him looking at a painting of the same thing."

Up to that point, I'd put up with "You don't speak Spanish, do you" followed more often than not by someone continuing to speak in Spanish while Lone Man just sat there. I put up with the pointless casing of cities that had nothing to do with the end of the movie, with the inane conversations from recognizeable actors. I even let the deliberately misleading music cues pass, because, well, that's what I was watching. That was the movie.

But then Jarmusch tries to have his cake and eat it too. Now we have repetition of phrases in addition to images. Phrases which mean nothing, just like they meant nothing the first time, only now they're introduced to trick you into thinking there's a philosophy behind the facade; that there's nothing worth looking at behind the curtain. Pay attention to the Wizard, you schmuck.

"Tilda Swinton is now describing the film while she pretends to talk about other movies. 'I like films where people just sit there and don't talk' followed by silence. Get it???"

She then goes on to talk about The Lady from Shanghai and how it was the only movie Rita Hayworth ever wore a blonde wig in. Then she talks about how Rita Hayworth dies at the end of the movie. Tilda Swinton is wearing a blonde wig and later in the film, Lone Man sees a movie poster of her in the same outfit she's wearing, followed by a shot of Swinton being forced into a car and driven away. Gee, I wonder what happened to her character?

Oh, and she has a clear umbrella. Let's see if you can figure out what that has to do with Nude.

"I really think Jim Jarmusch is fucking with me. He wants me to not go off on the pretentious film student who claims this is brilliant in a year's time. And he will. And hack professors. And people who mistake 'confusing' for 'deep' and defer to movies they think are smarter than they are will believe them, even if the film lacks every other necessary component of competency."

Somewhere down the line, I guarantee you someone tells you this is brilliant. They'll compare it to Dead Man and claim that "nothing happened in Dead Man, either", and then explain the story about going to the cemetery to find out what life is really about, or what "La vida non vale nada"has to do with the "meaning" of the film. Or the last title card: No Limits No Control. Or how clever it is that Bill Murray puts his wig on a skull. Get it? Foreshadowing!

I can think of a dozen different ways that first year film students are going to mistake this film for something deep and profound. How the references to Tarkovsky and Kaurismäki are awfully clever, and they'll share the movie like it's some great secret. And I'll make them watch Point Blank. I'll make them watch Made in USA. I'll even make them watch The Limey, which is a much better stylistic riff on Boorman's film, and then we'll talk about The Limits of Control.

This really pains me, because like I said, I've defended Jarmusch before with other films for many of the reasons I'm tearing The Limits of Control apart. The difference is that the other movies, while periodically indulgent, were interesting to watch. They didn't make a two hour movie feel like four hours of wanking into a camera. The characters were actually interesting and the story compelling. If you hate Dead Man (and I know a few of you who do) or Stranger Than Paradise, The Limits of Control would be torturous to sit through. Even if you know what's coming (which is nothing), it's an ultimately worthless exercise in pretentiousness.

So be glad that I watched it So You Won't Have To. Because I really hope you don't subject yourself to this film. Do yourself a favor and find a copy of Permanent Vacation, an early Jarmusch film that The Limits of Control has far more in common with than you'd think. The difference is that his first film, for all its rough patches, is still more interesting than his latest.