Review of The Limits of Control (2009) by Paul Z — 08 Sep 2009

Control is something that can never be fully realized in this life. He who can reach the extent of it, its limits, as it pertains to his own life, has mastered his existence. Isaach De Bankole, the unabashed center of this movie's cyclical universe, stands firmly on the farthest cut-off point of control of which the modern man is likely capable, so deeply ingrained in his daily algorithms that in spite of being involved in whatever one can make of what he inches closer and closer to each day, each cycle of his self-imposed limitation. Whatever occupation might engender the clandestine, almost theatrically affected fine points of his routine, which would lead to what it finally leads to, it is something this lone, anonymous stoic not only does but is, in the most distilled possible form.

Jim Jarmusch's remarkably, painstakingly subjective film, which requires the most open and accepting approach one is likely to find oneself able to offer, is in fact solid proof that cinema has a metaphysical effect. By muting and truncating every facet of the narrative that one would initially deem the meat of the story, the most important cinematic elements of the subject matter, and instead sitting quietly with one of the clockwork pawns in the grand scheme, whatever it is, the film transcends our man-made notions of time. A rational, sensible given one of a typical American multiplex exodus would make perfect sense were they to feel as if they are being put through a completely empty, pretentious and above-it-all string of fancy images and art appreciation. But whether you realize it promptly or it dawns on you later, this film is concurrently so minutely and intimately immersed and so dreamlike within the images comprising its day-to-day-to-day framework that it indeed delivers as a whole on that level. For me, it was so impactful that it affected my behavior for a good while thereafter:

Having seen this ardently unique, hypnotically stylized anti-thriller, I feel as if I'm more content to consider the simplest passing moment an entire and substantial imprint all its own, because presumably, and as this film seems to insist, we are all affected each and every second by the slightest, even completely unconscious stimuli. The only character, or more correctly a figment, that veritably insists upon the opposite is that of Bill Murray's, as he takes on an almost Bill O'Reilly-like caricature, also the only apparent American of any of the sequential interlopers in each glacially deliberate chain of routine, all of which encompass locations in Madrid, Seville and Almeria. Neither De Bankole nor most of the other members of the cast are Hispanic, not to mention nothing alike at all pertaining to their homogeneously nameless roles, whether or not they've worked with Jarmusch or been featured with each other before.

Jarmusch's films generally forgo established narrative structure, being without decisive plot advance and focusing more on mood and character evolution. The Limits of Control is the first film he has made that is set entirely in a foreign country, though his films are usually set in the United States, where Jarmusch looks through a visitorâ??s eyes as if fresh off the boat, creating a model of world cinema that orchestrates European and Japanese film with that of Hollywood, Eastern philosophy with Western philosophy. He has always cast foreign actors and often uses a great deal of non-English dialogue. But The Limits of Control, though many of these things apply, is of them all the furthest concentrated into the deepest introspective idiosyncrasy. By enhancing the everyday, by seeing human life in larger terms, can the individual eschew the muted strangulation of lasting problems. In the very little he shows and the very little he has his protagonist do, he asserts that notion in unapologetic singularity.