MUBI

An unnamed man (Isaach de Bankolé) meets two men at an airport who provide him with a list of cryptic instructions in various languages. Apparently obeying them, the man then takes a plane to Madrid and endures a series of mysterious meetings with people. The people do not appear to know the protagonist, or even each other, but they share in common a philosophical manner which renders further instructions difficult to interpret. Each of these encounters follows the pattern of a bizarre ritual involving two cups of espressos, the question “You don’t speak Spanish, right?” and a written code which the man reads and then eats. Throughout his unorthodox journey, the man registers almost no emotion, even as he is repeatedly accosted by a flirtatious nude woman. Towards the end of the film, the man’s role becomes clear when he makes his way into a guarded compound in the desert.

It is hard to sum up The Limits Of Control after just one viewing. By deliberately eschewing familiar narrative traits, director Jim Jarmusch demands special attention to detail from the audience, but the film’s slow pacing and the repetitive nature of the meetings often drive away interest. In essence, it is a mystery reluctant to be solved, Christopher Doyle’s stellar cinematography burnishing the more incomprehensible moments to a pretty shine. But even at his most obscure, Jarmusch’s boyish sense of humour remains, with lines such as “sometimes I like it in films when people just sit there, not saying anything”.

From Celluloid Breakfast

jim jarmusch and christopher doyle. the former is a director, the latter is a cinematographer. two of the most important people in the film industry today. have you been dreaming about their collaboration? you can stop now, because the film that you’ve been dreaming of has finally come.

the limits of control might not be jim jarmusch coolest film, but it is his most arrogant, stylish, and sophisticated film yet. this film is like the son of jim jarmusch’s two earlier works, which are ghost dog: the way of the samurai and coffee and cigarettes. the glimpse of ghost dog: the way of the samurai can be seen from the main character. the roaming around town, the lone wolf style, and the coldblooded killer aura. while the glimpse of coffee and cigarettes can be seen from the occurrences that are a bit repetitive, but different (and many great pop culture references) in dialogs and varies in characters. this combination turns out to be highly entertaining, intelligently artful, and better than both parents combined.

and if we must talk about the scoring, i must remind you that this is a jim jarmusch film. is there any jim jarmusch film that has a poor music in it? he befriended rza, iggy pop, neil young, and tom waits for god’s sake. and in this film, we’re once again spoiled by a great collection of songs from the likes of boris, sunn o))), bad rabbit, the black angels, and even lcd soundsystem.

bottom line, i must say that the limits of control is the kind of film that has perfectly reflected jim jarmusch’s cool and arrogant persona thanks to his own directing and of course christopher doyle’s expensive eyes.

What do you get when you pair a minimalist such as Jim Jarmusch with a genius cinematographer in Christopher Doyle? The answer is a stunning work of art, starkly beautiful in its compositions and intelligently obtuse in its storytelling. Much like the director’s other films for which I’ve had the pleasure of seeing, The Limits of Control is about one man’s spiritual journey. Sometimes his movies have a more straightforward focus in plot, (Ghost Dog or Broken Flowers), but other instances are more metaphysical and open to interpretation, (Dead Man). His newest most definitely falls into the latter category, taking us on the job with Isaach De Bankolé’s Lone Man. It is a criminal deed for sure, yet its scavenger hunt progression contains overlaps, motif repetition, and layering that insist part of what we are seeing is all in his head, allowing for the question of what is real to be a valid one. Is the insanity seen through a schizophrenic’s eyes any less real than the supposed reality of a sane man? Isn’t it just truth through a different colored lens? Jarmusch plays with constraints of society and what we deem as acceptable, showing that maybe we look too hard without truly seeing.

Control in and of itself describes either being at someone’s mercy or setting the rules for everyone else—either way, the limits are many. We can go through life as though we have a set standard to work towards, sheltering ourselves to a regimented path that is out of our hands. However, we must be in total control in order to stay true along that route, never allowing outside forces lead us astray, living a controlled existence that leads to an uncertain future constructed by what those around us say. On the flip side, if we go where life takes us, unhindered by preexisting rules, we are given an infinite amount of choices. So, by throwing caution to the wind and walking nomadically against what our families and friends see as success, we in fact give ourselves more control—the control to say no, to say yes, or to say nothing; a decision that’s ours to make. The Lone Man in this tale is an enigma that lives his life in both worlds, following the clues and system set up by his employers, yet keeping to his own rules and routines. While he has to wait three days for his next drop off, what he does in that time is completely up to him. His job takes him to exotic worlds ripe for exploration, giving him an experience uniquely his own.

This film is so utterly mesmerizing in its ability to be so opaque despite its rather linear structure. The Lone Man is given instructions to follow and matchboxes to exchange, meeting a colorful cast of characters along the way as messengers to the cause. We watch how it all progresses to its inevitable end point, leading him to and fro until his final destination arrives. Yet there are so many questions left unanswered along the way. What are the codes written on each piece of paper that eventually finds its way to his mouth, soon washed down with espresso? Are they part of the Spanish museum’s card catalog, leading him to artwork that eerily foreshadows the future? Why are stringed instruments so important, both physically in their existence within cases and figuratively with necklace charms and even a garrote? Why always two cups of coffee? Why the prevalence of certain quotes? The Lone Man’s quest begins to eventually cycle through to a point where aspects from the past seep into the present, whether it be a contact arriving onto a movie poster or the constant noticing of a woman somehow stuck to the center of it all, (Paz de la Huerta who now has been pretty much naked in the entirety of both films I’ve seen her in). Nothing fazes him, however, he just continues on.

It is all very abstract to the point where I began to believe nothing actually happened, that perhaps it is all in his mind. Maybe his mission is to destroy technology and its impact on humanity, making all interactions we have impersonal and unimportant. Mobile phones are explicitly forbidden in the Lone Man’s world while the works of man—paintings, buildings, etc—created far from the time of computers hold his unwavering gaze at every turn. This bohemian is caught within his own imagination, stealthily working his way through his mind until he can surprise and destroy the part attempting to excise his creativity. I’m sure you could watch and re-watch The Limits of Control over and over again, eventually coming up with a thesis to explain it all, but perhaps that’s grasping too hard at needing control over what you’ve seen. Sometimes not knowing, yet still enjoying for the sake of its actual existence, is enough. No explanation could increase or decrease my enjoyment of this film; it hits on a completely visceral and interior level, engaging the brain and senses, acting as visual poetry washing over me.

De Bankolé is the epitome of cool as always; his stoicism breaking into a few smiles along the way, constantly in control of his body with meditative martial arts while freeing his mind to take him wherever it may. Dolye shoots it all from exquisite angles and perspectives, framing the magnificent architecture of Spain as a series of static masterworks for the characters to walk through. Every other role is miniscule at best, but ever so crucial to the tale at hand. Reminiscent to Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes, each exchange occurs at a table with two cups willing to be consumed. The people coming in and out during these conversations wax philosophically about perspective and the meaning to it all, only exiting when the Lone Man takes out his matchbook. Although set up as a suspenseful tale of nefarious dealings, the film is infused with humor at every turn, from the opening scene of translation to the deadpan activities of characters throughout. Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Gael García Bernal, John Hurt, Luis Tosar and others work wonders in their semi-emotionless delivery, every word of utmost importance in cracking the case that is this film and, in all actuality, film itself. Throw in a riveting sequence of Flamenco, a haunting score, and even a memorable song playing during the end credits and Jarmusch has definitely crafted another master work of genius—out on the fringes of the industry as always—like only he can.

The Limits of Control 9/10

http://jaredmobarakreviews.wordpress.com/2010/01/12/limits-of-control/

“Are you interested in science by any chance? I’m interested in molecules. The Sufis say each one of us is a planet spinning in ecstasy. But I say each one of us is a set of shifting molecules. Spinning in ecstasy”

Every frame in this film belongs in an art gallery because it is wholly original, the way each face can be, the way light only hits something once, the way a dream is beautiful. Jim Jarmusch and Christopher Doyle create echoes of feeling, memory, love, and fashion- in love with the purity of images as much as they are in the destruction of it. The music crushes each placid moment until the next great canvas bleeds in. Performances are like playful haiku’s scrawled on old Spanish walls. This is so fucking ZEN.

I just love the reviews so far. Here is my offering. This is an expanded version of a review I published in a Dutch language Belgian film magazine, written with the benefit of a wonderful interview with Jarmusch in the production notes. I have resisted the temptation to refer to previous reviews.

“We were hoping to create something sensorial for the audience; that when you leave the theater, for the way you look at an object, even if only temporarily, to be new in a way. The way you look at a mundane cup of coffee on a table, or at the light shifting in a room you’re sitting in.” Quite an extraordinary ambition for a thriller, be it one with “no guns, no mobiles and no sex”. But this is Jim Jarmusch speaking, an auteur cobbling together films with “Broken Flowers”, “Coffee and Cigarettes” in a world “Stranger than Paradise”.

LIMITS OF CONTROL is quite a change of register. In his previous offering, BROKEN FLOWERS, he treated us to a burnt-out middle-aged man’s touching search for a son who may not even exist, leading him to revisit an extroardinary range of women out of his past, each one of them incarnated by a marvellous actress. A melancholy tale with an unforgettably hang-dog Bill Murray. After this, it may come as quite a shock to be invited along with a cool professional, visiting a series of enigmatic contacts on the road to a looming destination, all of this in an oppressive atmosphere reinforced by throbbing and brooding electric guitar and drum music. LIMITS OF CONTROL has irritated and frustrated many viewers, critics and even Jarmusch fans. This is basically because it has the trappings of a thriller but it really isn’t, unless in an abstract sort of way. Thrillers are based on plots, dramatic tension, action and twists. That just happens to be exactly what Jarmusch films are not about. He has the unique ability to spin leisurely unfolding tales, fragmented and ironic chronicles, patiently treading in the footsteps of roaming, bemused, otherwordly loners. But, contrary to appearances, this may be exactly that kind of film after all.

Isaach De Bankolé is a nameless Lone Man on a mission whose purpose we will never really understand. But although he seems so tightly focused and target-oriented, he basically drifts from one clandestine meeting to the next, following hazy clues. Jarmusch obviously constructs these meetings as variations on a pattern, with some exact repetitions but never quite the same, cleverly constructed out of thriller cues. Lone Man orders two coffees, in separate cups, please. Presumably, this helps to identify him to his excentric contacts: a man with a guitar or a violin, a woman with a blonde wig in a country and western suit, a Mexican guy or a Japanese girl, all of this in Spain. The first question is always whether he speaks Spanish, which he doesn’t, and the next is whether he has “by any chance” an interest in – depending on the speaker – music or film or hallucinations or chemistry. The contact starts a digression, in Spanish or not. Lone Man remains silent until he gets back to business: they exchange match boxes containing coded messages or diamonds. He then receives curiously poetic, surrealist instructions: “The girl is criss-cross”, “There are those among us who are not among us”. Later on Lone Man swallows the note. A helicopter is seen to fly over a few times, reappearing at the end. Once somebody is kidnapped. In the best OO7 tradition Lone Man finds a naked seductress in his hotel room bed, who will not survive and he finally kills a villain in a heavily garded villa.

All of this does not amount to a story, but a clever string of hints that induces you to connect dots that are not connected, a sort of do-it-yourself story. And you find yourself playing along, although Jarmusch makes the rules of the game plainly obvious. I was reminded in turn of Rivette’s unfathomable conspiracies, Lynch’s dream logic and Antonioni’s Professione: Reporter.

So if there is no real plot to unify this film, what does? I would say that it is basically a challenge to the viewer, to open up to unusual ways of looking and thinking. In this centripetal universe, “without centre or borders”, Lone Man seems like a lineary axis, a hard nucleus, the impassive traveller, observer and participant, in and out of the world at the same time, with De Bankolé’s unscrutable, sculpted face, ascetic like Melville’s SAMURAI. He looks at the world like he looks at the modernist works of art in Madrid’s Reina Sofia museum: staring coolly but intently as if trying to force out their essence. The Leone-style close-ups reveal tiny changes, a slight mellowing of the gaze, a hardly perceptible curl of the mouths’s corners. Only a flamenco performance brings a broad grin to his face. But when he is doing his tai chi meditation, perfectly controlling his body, he closes his eyes and all sounds disappear, as if to counterbalance the sensory impressions of an otherwise very material world. At some point you begin to wonder whether this is all in Lone Mans’s imagination, especially as camera images fade into paintings and vice versa.

In the production notes, Jarmusch recounts how the film started with a few sheets of notes and then grew out of the Spanish locations. Jarmusch and Doyle location hunting would make a perfect subject for a Jarmusch film, exploring a place’s light and materials, lights and ambient sound, which together they capture so marvelously. Jarmusch’ films have always been grounded in the material reality of places, to me always a refreshing experience in today’s movie culture infatuated with CGI and fake hyperrealism, over the top camera moves and bombastic soundtracks. LIMITS OF CONTROL offers sheer pictural beauty, not tourism, but breathtakingly tight, minimalist framings of sundry spots in Madrid and Sevilla, of airports, trains and deserts. Streets and staircases, the humming of a high-speed train and wind farms seen through the windows, reflections in glass and steel surfaces, doorknobs and urban panoramas: such is the stuff that this film is made of. This is the beauty we need to savour.

Jarmusch also talks about how he rehearsed scenes that are not in the film, to allow the actors to find their character for those that are. Rodin famously said the sculpture is already in the slab of marble, waiting to be discovered. In the same way, Jarmusch seems to have discovered his film in the locations and the actors. The result demands to be experienced like a trip, a musical-visual poem, drifting like Rimbaud’s Bateau Ivre, a quote from which opens the film. Jarmusch claims to have let the film grow organically, using words like intuition, chance, feeling, innocence, magic, madness. But the result also demonstrates extroardinary craftsmanship, mastery of style and, well, control. As usual the fragmentation is well-conceived, the roughness studied, which is what makes it all worthwhile. Jarmusch must be wondering where his own “limits of control” are as a filmmmaker.

This is exactly the issue that most preoccupies Lone Man’s contact persons, less espionage professionals than confused would-be philosophers, offering bribes of pop philosophy. Their musings are about the way musical instruments retain the memory of all the music ever played on them, a mystical quality for the one, a property of molecules in another’s pseudo scientific explanation. And about how all reality is just imagination, and how others are trying to control your perception. About artists and bohemians versus bourgeois, which may be about different conceptions of art, or about artists versus capitalists, which is what many people have read into the final confrontation with Bill Murray as a bad-mouthed gangster-manager-politican type, trapped inside his own security walls that Lone Man passes through with the power of imagination. And baroque ‘memento mori’, reminders of death are omnipresent, strangely evoking Greenaway’s grim black humour. “La vida ne vale nada”. A warning from a flamenco keeps popping up in dialogue: “He who imagines himself bigger than others, should visit the graveyard”. Bill Murray drapes his hairpiece on a skull.

Does all this add up to a consistent statement, a Jarmusch philosophy, a metaphorical message? I don’t think it does and that is not the point. This is just Jarmusch quoting and exploring, offering fragments of ideas that intrigue him or amuse him, without taking them fully seriously or pretending to integrate them into a final statement, just tickling us into trying to cobble it together just like we are cobbling together a non-existent plot.

So what it comes down to is not to to try and control this film. Look at it as an invitation to share Jarmusch’ peculiar, off-beat way of exploring things. Once you let yourself be carried along, everything seems to strangely fit together, even if it is hard to make rational sense of it. In this respect, with LIMITS OF CONTROL Jarmusch has come closer to Godard than ever. Make no mistake: behind Jarmusch’ famed coolness, his seemingly off-hand minimalism, there is a film-maker’s very real ambition, a determination to keep doing things his way without compromises, too rare a thing these days in art of all sorts.

Although on the surface this may be his most unsmiling film, miles removed from DOWN BY LAW, the irony, the games, the fun are still there, if anything on a more profound level. And so is the healthy self-mockery. After Tilda Swinton muses: “Sometimes I just like it in a movie when people just sit there, without saying anything”, she shuts op, and so does Lone Man and they just sit. I really agree with the statement, because it is a tenet of minimalist film-making, opening our perception to the non-dramatic aspects of what there is to see and hear, as demonstrated by Chantal Akerman’s masterpieces of the style. But in this context it is an in-joke, infuriating to Jarmusch’ critics but to those enchanted by this film simply demonstrating his fundamental lack of self-importance.

from http://joshtierney.blogspot.com/

The Limits of Control is a film that only ‘clicks’ once Bill Murray arrives in its final moments. Until that point it is another type of film – a cold, desperately philosophical film which aims to serve as a document of what it means to be cool in the 00s. Another cold, desperately philosophical film attempted this for the 60s: Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï, which The Limits of Control owes a great deal to.

Isaach De Bankolé’s detached samouraï is a hitman who must harness the power of his imagination in order to make his hit. He does this as a pop culture hitman, wearing a blue suit and sculpted demeanour, through paintings found in the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid. By viewing these paintings – here used as an example of legitimate art – and applying them to his pop imagination, he is able to form encounters with other genre caricatures. The ‘legitimate art’ of these encounters is found in the characters’ simple philosophical musings.

Until Bill Murray arrives, the characters of the film only tell Isaach what he wants to hear. His imagination can only stretch so far. After all, the reason Isaach exists is so his life can be given its empty poetry by the writing and direction of Jim Jarmusch and the cinematography of Christopher Doyle: the bulk of the film is comprised of sometimes gorgeous, always cool shots of Isaach as spare selections of drone metal accompany his existence. Then Bill Murray gasps ‘fuck you’ and the film suddenly means something.

What little dialogue and lyrics there are up to this point focuses on the need for arrogant men to remind themselves they’ll be in the same spot at the end of their lives as everyone else. At its most basic and obvious, the film is about the battle between artistic bohemians wishing for a world of colour and stuffy businessmen not knowing what colour is. I believe the film is not necessarily on either side, and in this way the film becomes an allegory on the need for the low in high culture and vice versa.

To illustrate this I will use the film’s references to film history. There is, first of all, Isaach De Bankolé’s approximation of Alain Delon’s character in Le Samouraï: both are hitmen who exist solely in their own minds, who rarely speak and only hear what they desire. Both have their own unique rituals: Isaach De Bankolé does his controlled stretches every morning and drinks two (2) cups of espresso, while Alain Delon straightens his hat in front of a mirror every time he leaves his apartment. Through references to noirs of the past, Le Samouraï is both an art film that aims to be a gangster film and a gangster film that aims to be an art film. Through references to Le Samouraï, The Limits Of Control is a film that aims for these aims.

There are the constant references to film in the dialogue: when Isaach De Bankolé meets the Always Nude Woman, the Always Nude Woman – lying on a bed on her stomach much like Brigitte Bardot at the beginning of Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt – asks Isaach De Bankolé if he thinks she has ‘a nice ass’. He replies, with only a split-second of hesitation, ‘yes’. This is, of course, the opening to Contempt, and will be obvious to many film buffs and European cinema-goers but obscure to most North Americans. I use this as my example of a reference to a film considered art, and thus a reference to film as art.

For the reference to film as pop culture, Tilda Swinton stops by Isaach De Bankolé’s favourite café and not-so-casually states The Limits Of Control is like a Hitchcock film. If Jim Jarmusch had not focused on the film’s alienating aspects, this would almost be true, at least as far as film as entertainment is concerned.

For one other example of one of the many ways in which The Limits Of Control both contrasts and parallels high and low culture, I will use the Always Nude Woman. When she first appears on screen, as a reference to Contempt, her body is utilised both in a gently exploitative way (far more gently than Brigitte Bardot’s producer-mandated appearance) and as an example of beauty in the female form. This combination then branches out in the two directions: there are the sequences where she is posing in a transparent raincoat, a packaged object, and there are the sequences in which she is lying on the bed beside Isaach, and the lighting is hitting her just right, and we’re able to look at the female form as an example of the highest possible art.

That it is not until Bill Murray appears onscreen – a comedian known to one generation for his roles in films such as Ghostbusters and Caddyshack, and now known to another generation for his roles in films such as Rushmore, Lost In Translation and Broken Flowers – is only suiting. Like the paintings Isaach De Bankolé uses to ignite his imagination, The Limits Of Control offers a lot to read into, far more than its juvenile philosophical musings might imply. The fact it is so ceaselessly cool while doing this makes it a (mostly) successful convergence of what is considered high and low art in our culture today.

I just finished this film, and here’s where I fall in on it:

Every speaking character aside from the assassin represents an aspect of the Humanities, and the villain obviously represents Capitalism.

So Arts and Sciences destroying Capitalism is what this film is all about.

Yes, it takes awhile to unravel, but int he meantime we are witness to examples of beauty in art, architecture, dance—reinforcing the theme of the film.

The Limits of Control are exactly where Capitalism fails to exert itself, not because it doesn’t try, but because free expression will always find a way.

Shallow? You don’t look deep enough.

Dull? You have no patience.

Calculated? This is not an argument.

Pretentious? Pardon me while I puke.

Mediocre? No. Borderline exquisite.

But to each their own. If you only look at the surface, that is all that reflects back. This film is all about the meta.

Imagine an action movie without any action, imagine james bond without the guns, sex or gadgets.
Instead of witty one-liners imagine dialogue that would make even JL Godard wince, a movie that would make one guy write “its boring to the point of humour”.
Imagine an advert for Armani shot on location with atmospheric, psychedelic music stretched out to almost 2 hours..
this is a “metaphysical” thriller where the “lone man”, the silent assassin uses only his imagination to break into a heavily-guarded compound and kill the evil baddie…
Admittedly the film looks incredible as you would expect with C Doyle at the helm and the acting is superb as one would expect from the stellar cast. But this hardly makes a film “mesmerising” does it? If this were edited down to half its length i think this could be very interesting to see in a museum. As it is the narrative is trying, its not so much “surrealistic” but minimalistic to the extreme. Most of the best art-house films succeed on the back of their story as much as their aesthetics which is why this one (though intriguing) ultimately fails for me. As to Rosenbaum disagreeing with the Variety report re,“There are limits to artistic self-indulgence,” I have seen enough this year to think that if ever that statement is true then it is this year

I really think most people misread this movie as being a too-cool-for-school super indie film.
I think that, in the same way his deconstructed the western genre with deadpan wit and humor in DEAD MAN, or deconstructed the mob film in the same way in GHOST DOG, he’s doing the same thing in this film with the international espionage thriller in this film.
He’s pointing and laughing at all the silly things this guy has to do, and the fact that he doesn’t really have any life at all, in order to meet these hugely different people for no reason, ect, instead of just going an killing Bill Murray, which I assume his job was the whole time.
It’s Andy Kaufmanesque in how deadpan it is, it’s boring to the point of humor, but you get really pretty cinematography to tide you through til the end.
Seeing that this is a comedy, I think, proves you have a sense of humor.

La más reciente película de Jim Jarmusch retoma los elementos más significativos de su filmografía para cuestionar su propia representación. Protagonizada por Isaach de Bankolé (el heladero francés de Ghost Dog), la película narra sus ires y venires durante la realización de un misterioso trabajo por contrato, como si se tratara de un policial de Melville con un Alain Delon contemplativo. El solitario misterioso, cuya separación del mundo es lingüística tanto en las palabras como en la imagen, recorre las calles de varios lugares de España, mira cuadros en los museos, y recibe una serie de indeterminadas misiones de extraños muy particulares. Cada elemento es como una suma a una interminable acumulación de Macguffins.
Este universo cool es permanentemente cuestionado. Ahora los personajes tan característicos del cine de Jarmusch terminan por separarse por completo del mundo, llegando a un punto en el que su construcción no es más que la determinación de una imagen recargada e intertextual. Nótense los monologos cuasi-wikipedia, que por momentos recuerdan al diálogo sobre Nikola Tesla de Coffee & Cigarettes (2003), sin olvidar las permanentes autoreferencias que no puedo evitar relacionar con las de Inglorious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009). Todo este panorma cool, donde los personajes se abordan con largas “presentaciones” musicales y estilizadas, se convierte en el mapa de elementos del cine de Jarmusch, quien a través de esto ha logrado evidenciar sus propias formas. Los planos cenitales de los cafés no son sólo un inocente guiño con complicidad hacia sus fans, sino algo que ya devino en regla. Los elementos cinematográficos, recursos narrativos, estilos, etc, han devenido todos en regla, por más modernos, extravagantes y novedosos que sean, porque son sólo los diferentes lados de un cine que no para de mirarse a sí mismo, separado del mundo. De esta forma, Jarmusch hace atravesar a su personaje por este mundo y nos enseña cómo mirarlo (una de las cosas más interesantes es prestarle mucha atención a la forma de mirar los cuadros en las escenas del museo, y la diferencia entre una nocion de imagen y de superficie). Y no es sólo el solitario quien lo hace, sino el mismo realizador, que se ha movilizado hacia una tierra en la que el extrajero es ahora él. Recordemos que una de las principales preocupaciones del cine de Jarmusch siempre ha sido la de ver a los Estados Unidos a través de los ojos del extranjero.
Todo este armado está también pensado desde el diseño sonoro, el cual al igual que la imagen, no deja de aplicar una apreciación por el tiempo, por las duraciones, como cuando escuchamos con atención el sonido de las cuerdas al aire de la guitarra. Entonces, a partir de este punto de vista contemplativo, también podemos observar en los travellings callejeros típicos del realizador (ahora cargados de cortes de plano y efectos), que aquello que podía verse continuo, ahora se presenta interrumpido y enmarcado en los límites de la imagen. La duda que se plantea entonces en la narración del film, en su resolución, es la de si esta gigantesca construcción es posible de desmoronar a partir de la muerte del poderoso Bill Murray. En esa escena hay algo que me recuerda vagamente al final de Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965), porque empecé a preguntarme si, al igual que en la de Godard, era posible que se destruyan los nexos de aquello instaurado (los personajes deambulando y chocándose como si estuviesen desconfigurados). Jarmusch simplemente muestra a Isaach de Bankolé finalizar su trabajo e irse dejando la incógnita.

Leonard Maltin wrote of this film:

“Incomprehensible and downright boring drama about a mysterious man with a criminal past who arrives in spain to finish a job…”

…"Mainly he walks around a lot, encountering people who utter clues like ""wait three days until you see the bread and the guitar will find you"…".

…"Indulgent exercise by Jarmusch wastes a talented cast, although Swinton, in too brief a cameo, is vibrant and original. Her character sums the whole thing up by saying ""sometimes there are films where people just sit there"…"

…Can’t wait, sounds like classic Jarmusch.

The nameless protagonist in “The Limits of Control” is a man of many rituals but few words. Traveling through Spain, the Lone Man (Isaach De Bankolé) practices Tai Chi in sheen, tailored suits, wearing the same outfit for days, even while sleeping. At cafés and on trains, he never fails to order two espressos in separate cups. From the start, it’s clear he’s on a mission, but what that mission entails is entirely unknown to us. The only clues come from the characters the Lone Man meets on his journey. From a Spanish violinist to a naked woman with a gun, each character gives him a hint and a small box of matches with a cryptic note tucked inside.

Each person the Lone Man finds also serves a greater purpose for the film’s director, Jim Jarmusch. The co-conspirators lecture the Lone Man about music, art and science, all the while elucidating the director’s philosophy as a filmmaker and artist. When the Blonde (Tilda Swinton) joins the Lone Man at a Madrid café, she asks him if he likes movies. He says nothing, as usual, but she proceeds to confess her love for Alfred Hitchcock and films where “people just sit there, not saying anything.”

Like many of Jarmusch’s films, “The Limits of Control” often feels like a movie where people sit together in weighty silence. Beyond defending his cinematic style, Jarmusch invokes Hitchcock to justify the Lone Man’s enigmatic quest. In Hitchcock’s suspense films, the action often hinges on an obscure object (or some other element) that drives the characters. What the object or element truly is matters far less than the drama or suspense it elicits. Near the end of “The Limits of Control,” we witness the Lone Man complete his mission without ever grasping the significance of his actions.

Other than the lush sightseeing around Spain, at the Reina Sofía museum in Madrid and the Torre del Oro in Sevilla, “The Limits of Control” doesn’t stray far from the format of a feature-length series of vignettes like “Coffee and Cigarettes.” If the overarching plot is really of little consequence, as Jarmusch seems to suggest, then many of the scenes in “The Limits of Control” could stand on their own as short films. What ultimately unites these would-be vignettes into a feature film is not much more than a careful visual aesthetic and the constant presence of the Lone Man.