The appeal of films by Jim Jarmusch, especially his early work, is difficult to explain to someone who’s never watched one, and frankly even to some who have. His movies don’t exactly feel or behave like anything you’d expect from a regular movie. 1989’s Mystery Train, for example, has little story or plot to speak of, no big dramatic moments, and hardly any character development (most of the characters are the same at the end as they were in the beginning). Jarmusch’s pacing is also widely described as “languid,” which is a flattering way of saying slow and meandering. Despite all this, if you’re able to slide into his vibe, a Jarmusch film can also be strangely compelling and, honestly, just pretty cool. Jarmusch himself exudes a sense of coolness in real life, and his movies reflect that.
Needless to say, these same films can also feel pretentious and borderline insufferable for anyone who doesn’t manage to tap into the director’s wavelength. Jarmusch is an acquired taste. His work requires some patience, and a willingness to just ease into the world he’s created. Those who love him tend to really love him. And those who don’t, well… the world’s full of many different kinds of movies, and some may just not be for everyone.
| Title: | Mystery Train |
| Year of Release: | 1989 |
| Director: | Jim Jarmusch |
| Watched On: | Blu-ray |
| Also Available On: | 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray The Criterion Channel Kanopy Various VOD rental and purchase platforms |
Even the title Mystery Train doesn’t have much relevance to the movie, except as a reference to a 1953 blues song by Junior Parker. A couple characters arrive by train at the beginning and leave that way at the end, and another train passes their hotel periodically, but nothing about any of that is mysterious.
The film is structured in a triptych fashion, with three three different and seemingly unrelated stories. The initial segment, called Far from Yokohama, follows a pair of young Japanese tourists, Jun and Mitzuko (Masatoshi Nagase and Yûki Kudô), who travel to Memphis to visit the stomping grounds of their music idols. Mitzuko is obsessed with Elvis, but Jun prefers Carl Perkins. Mitzuko speaks a very small amount of English, Jun none at all. The two walk around with no real plan or agenda, and no pre-booked reservations for anywhere to stay. They eventually spot a seedy downtown hotel, the type of place that charges by the hour for some rooms. Mitzuko thinks it looks fun. Jun, rightly, thinks it’s a dump, but doesn’t fight about it.
Mitzuko and Jun have different personalities, her wide-eyed and optimistic and him a little sullen. They get along fine. They don’t argue or have any drama. Nothing bad happens to them. In the morning, they get back on the train to hit their next destination.
Segment Two, A Ghost, finds a recently-widowed Italian woman named Luisa (Nicoletta Braschi) stranded in Memphis during a layover due to issues with her flight. With nothing to do but waste time until the next day, she makes her way to a diner, where she’s accosted by a strange man (Tom Noonan), who sits at her table uninvited and insists on telling her a fantastical story about seeing the ghost of Elvis. At first seemingly harmless enough, the man eventually grows more menacing.
To avoid him, Luisa ducks into a hotel, the same one where Jun and Mitzuko are staying. Also in the lobby is a friendly chatterbox named Dee Dee (Elizabeth Bracco, sister of Lorraine) who’s having a very bad day and can’t afford a room. Because she’d rather not be alone, Luisa invites the woman to stay with her. Although very different in temperament and personality, Luisa finds Dee Dee endearing and is glad to have the company.
The final piece, Lost in Space, concerns a blue-collar nobody named Johnny (Joe Strummer, guitarist and lead vocalist of The Clash), who’s just been laid off from his job and had his wife walk out on him the same day. As he gets drunker and drunker at a bar and reveals that he’s carrying a gun, he and a buddy (Rick Aviles) rope Johnny’s meek and nervous brother-in-law Charlie (Steve Buscemi in an early role before his breakthrough in Reservoir Dogs) into an impromptu and ill-thought-out liquor store robbery, from which they must go on the lam and hide from police. You can imagine where they wind up.
As should be obvious, these three stories all converge on the same hotel. Only upon watching the second part do we realize time has reset and it takes place concurrently with the first one we already saw. Then the same happens again.
The characters from each group never meet the others, though may have unexpected connections. The main commonalities between their stories are the hotel Night Clerk (shock rock legend Screamin’ Jay Hawkins) and bellboy (Cinqué Lee, brother of Spike Lee), the sound of a gunshot, the voice of a radio DJ (Tom Waits), and a train that rolls by the building.
The only story to have much of a plot or dramatic action is the third, and even that one ultimately amounts to less than it might have. Somehow, this doesn’t feel boring (at least, not for everyone). The characters are interesting enough to make spending a little time with them seem worthwhile.
As much a character as any of them is the city of Memphis itself, which at that time was at its most economically depressed. The entire area looks run-down and decrepit. The streets are mostly empty. Jun and Mitzuko’s walking tour through it is a fascinating time capsule of a once-thriving music mecca at its lowest ebb. Ghosts of its former greatness linger, even if all that’s left is a hollowed-out shell.
Jarmusch directs all this in a laid-back, observational style. He doesn’t force drama or conflict. Perhaps described by some as a hipster, the director has impeccable test in music, and cares more about attitude and atmosphere than about traditional filmmaking conventions like narrative momentum or definitive conclusions. Mystery Train is a hang-out movie. So long as you can enjoy hanging out with the characters, it’s time well-spent.
The Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection released Mystery Train on Blu-ray in 2013 as spine #521. At the time of this writing, no 4K version has been announced or hinted.
As an older Blu-ray release, I went into this viewing skeptical about how well it might hold up, especially after reading notes in the included booklet that warn about letterboxing “on standard 4:3 televisions.” Even by 2010, 16:9 HDTV had firmly taken hold and 4:3 was mostly phased out. (Who would watch Blu-ray on a standard-definition TV anyway?) The booklet also references a “high-definition digital transfer” (undoubtedly scanned at either 1080p or 2K) “from a 35mm interpositive,” not from the camera negative.
With all that in mind, I was pleasantly surprised that the Blu-ray still looks quite nice, even projected onto a large home theater screen. The picture is sharp and well-detailed. If any artificial sharpening was applied, artifacts of such are minimal. Right from the vivid blue of the opening credits, colors are very impressive and striking. Mystery Train was Jim Jarmusch’s first film in color, and he chose a palette of vibrant primary hues. Green grass and the hotel Night Clerk’s bold red suit stand out. Daytime scenes are bright, with strong highlights for a format without HDR. The contrast in nighttime scenes is also excellent.
Film grain is retained with appropriate texture, but not excessive. On the downside, scanning from an interpositive means the film elements have some occasional light speckling, an instance of flashing in the upper left corner that looks like film damage, and one lengthy shot with a prominent hair at the bottom of the frame. None of these should be deal-breakers for fans of the movie.
Criterion states that the film is, “presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.77:1.” In practice, this is a full-screen 16:9 transfer without a single pixel of letterboxing or pillarboxing. Not that the difference between 1.77:1 and 1.78:1 would be at all noticeable during viewing, but why bother making that distinction? For that matter, 1.77:1 has never been a standard theatrical aspect ratio. I expect that the this is really an open-matte transfer from the original 1.85:1. However, even at that, the difference between 1.85:1 and 1.78:1 is negligible and doesn’t affect the compositional intent of the photography.
The movie’s soundtrack is provided in PCM mono. By 1989, stereo-surround was near-ubiquitous in well-budgeted studio productions, but indie films like this one were sometimes still limited to mono. That’s a little disappointing considering how important music is to this movie, but the mono here has excellent clarity and fidelity regardless. All the music sounds good, and the sound design is rather creative at times, with effects such as the echo in the Memphis train station. That said, the track has little dynamic range or bass. In fact, I noticed the lights on my main subwoofer flash into Standby mode a few times during stretches where it wasn’t being used at all.
Because Jarmusch dislikes audio commentaries, he instead provides an hour-long audio-only Q&A, which he starts by reading then-current events from a newspaper before answering questions submitted by fans. To be honest, many of his answers are quite pretentious, especially his extremely long list of influences from classical writers, artists, philosophers, and other intellectuals. Following that are 18 minutes of excerpts from a 2001 documentary about Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, a 17-minute tour of the filming locations in Memphis (accompanied by some amusing stories about the shoot), and a couple galleries of Polaroids taken on set and stills from a photo book published in tandem with the film.
The booklet in the case offers a couple essays by film critic Dennis Lim and music critic Peter Guralnick. The label side of the disc itself is cleverly printed to resemble an LP single.
Related
- Steve Buscemi
- Tom Noonan
- Other Awesome Movies of 1989
The Video File Blog 
Wow, need to see this, love all the mentioned musicians. Have only seen Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes when it played for one week in Belgium in 2003. The conversation between Iggy Pop and Tom Waits (in)directly inspired me to write my novella, so I will forever be grateful to Jarmusch for said inspiration. Lastly, have to mention, I’m deeply jealous of the man’s excellent hairline. David Lynch-esque.
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