Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai

Jim Jarmusch has a new movie coming out in May: The Limits of Control. It stars Isaac De Bankolé, a native Ivorian (from Cote de Ivoire), as a well-dressed assassin, and there could be no better preparation than to watch Ghost Dog, Jarmusch’s 1999 film about hip-hop and urban samurai.

Forest Whitaker stars as Ghost Dog, a loner who receives contracts from a mobster in the form of notes attached to a passenger pigeon. Ghost Dog reads up on the “Way of the Samurai”, and the film is interspersed with quotes, like “the Way of the Samurai is found in death. Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily.” Despite the Eastern philosophizing, Jarmusch’s script is fundamentally a gangster movie, as lavishly devoted to hip-hop and the Wu-Tang Clan as it is to old school Yakuza flicks. Immersed in its own influences, Ghost Dog is a druggy and mysterious film meant to be watched late at night.

The intriguing aspect, one that I was drawn to, is the meditative and ancient methodology employed by Ghost Dog in his profession. While he is a “warrior” in the sense that he deals in death, his approach is akin to Wall Street suits citing Sun Tzu’s The Art of War in boardroom battles. His loneliness and solitude, also, brings us into his introspection, aided by the plodding pace and strange atmosphere pervasive in each scene. The mobsters who wish to kill him are confused and dismissive of his “poetry crap”, yet their own evil is uneven and unfocused. The dialectic between the cold, modern world and the cold, ancient one is brought up- impermanence and chaos. We could all be Ghost Dog in whatever diligent work we may choose to do.

Perhaps the most surreal aspect of the film is the Brazilian ice cream vendor Raymond, Ghost Dog’s only friend. Despite the fact that neither can understand what the other is saying, they bond over ice cream cones. A brief cameo by the head Wu-Tang clan member RZA, credited as “the samurai in camoflauge”, adds to the mystery.

Not all of us can be samurai assassins, with eccentric numbers of pigeons on our roofs, yet you might learn to appreciate the code of the samurai in daily living, as well as the effective and obvious synthesis of Eastern philosophy and warrior spirit with the grittiness and self-possession of hip-hop. A quiet, strange, and ultimately bloody movie crafted for the grindhouse by a true master.

The Squid and the Whale

The Squid and the Whale is Noah Baumbach’s 2005 ode to growing up amidst the snobbery of academics in 1980’s Brooklyn- capturing a time and a place with cinematic fetishism while crafting a fascinating portrait of a particular family, based roughly on Baumbach’s own. Jeff Daniels is a literature professor named Bernard Berkman who’s career is on the decline- as his wife Joan (Laura Linney) begins gaining respect for her own work. Their two sons Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) and Frank (Owen Kline) are regular kids, until their parents sit them down in their Park Slope apartment and reveal that they are going to separate.

The ensuing power struggle is the heart of the film, as Bernard gains the allegiance of the eldest boy Walt (the character most resembling Baumbach). Walt is a seventeen-year old intellectual, and Jesse Eisenberg plays the role to perfection- spouting phrases such as “Kafka-esque” and turning into his father’s sycophant, echoing his father’s opinions on literature (Tale of Two Cities is “minor Dickens”) and his mother. In a way, the film centers around Walt, following his strained first love and musical aspirations- performing Pink Floyd’s “Hey You” at the high school talent show while claiming he wrote the song himself. Eisenberg is born for this role, and it will certainly last as one of his best performances.

Walt’s younger brother Frank is a strange boy who takes tennis lessons from a “pro” (William Baldwin), who gives him the encouragement lacking in his real father’s parenting. His mother soon begins seeing the tennis pro, and a jealous triangle pits the family against one another.

The film, directed by Baumbach but produced by Wes Anderson and containing obvious influences, is on-point- the wine, the New Yorker, and all elements of WASP snobbery rolled into something quite funny. Like Anderson, Baumbach borders on the surreal, especially with the idiosyncratic dialogue and exaggerated pomposity of all parties. The end result is both an intelligent and heartfelt slice-of-life narrative that, while limited in scope, is extremely enjoyable.

The Assasination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Never has a film done so much with swaying fields of wheat. Andrew Dominik’s Western The Assassination of Jesse James wields the natural elements more effectively than it does its star, Brad Pitt, who plays the infamous outlaw bandit Jesse James. He’s a quiet, troubled, very nearly angsty individual, often smoking cigars and staring into the distance. When a young man named Robert Ford (Casey Affleck) shows up at the James’ gang camp looking for work. A long-time fan of the infamous Jesse James, Ford is at first rejected, but then allowed to tag along on a late-night train robbery in the woods.

Robert Ford’s unhealthy preoccupation with Jesse James propels most of the film- bordering on lust, Ford had kept comics and novellas detailing the largely exagerated exploits of Jesse James under his bed since he was a boy, and so the chance to not only meet but ride alongside James is more than appealing to him. Pitt is clearly comfortable in the charismatic, cool-guy role- not unlike Tyler Durden in Fight Club, his level of “cool” is leaps and bounds above the geek squad that surrounds him. Not to say that the performances by Casey Affleck, Sam Rockwell, and Paul Schneider are anything short of excellent- in fact, they are leaps and bounds above Pitt- but they certainly aren’t filmed as romantically. The cinematographer, Roger Deakins, pulls out all the stops in this particular film, which at times feels like a showcase for over-thought and overwrought camera technique. It can be said, however, that all elements carry that same ominous tone, an almost religious-like solemnity that pervades all of the characters up to their inevitable deaths.

Let’s be honest- you know that Jesse James gets killed, and judging by the title, should be able to deduce that it’s Bob Ford that does it. The murder is crafted brilliantly, a strange alignment of tables and chairs and a feather duster and the quick, brutal act combine to again, provide a strange atmostphere. Also in keeping with the unfolding story, the scene is absent of cliche, and Dominik seems to try his darnedest to do what you don’t think he’s going to.

The film is unfortunately mostly absent of substance- sure, there are characters, but they are secondary to the lighting and the atmosphere and emotive tone. Nonetheless, whilst overlong, it appears a successful experiment and harkens back to the auteur days- a companion piece to the Coen brothers’ No Country For Old Men.

The Visitor

Released in 2008 by Overture Films, The Visitor has gone largely unnoticed by the general populace.  The film was written and directed by Thomas McCarthy, who’s previous film The Station Agent pointed towards good things. With The Visitor, he cements his talent, crafting a slow-moving realist drama, a contemplation of subjects ranging from culture and art to death and the political atmosphere of post-9/11 New York, all fueled by the beat of a djembe drum.

Walter is a quiet, lonely professor living in the Connecticut suburbs at the beginning of the film. When a colleague asks him to go to New York City and present a paper- the subject of which is never made clear- he is forced to accept. He has reduced his number of classes to one, to give himself time to write a book- the subject of which is also never made clear. He arrives in New York, to his old apartment, and finds two  people living there. Shocked at first, they are more distrustful of him than he of them. Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and Zainab (Danai Jekesai Gurira) are two immigrants from Syria and Senegal respectively. Walter invites them to stay until they find a place to live.

As Walter is exposed to new foods and customs, it is painfully obvious that he lacks drive or direction with his career. It is revealed that his wife had passed away several years earlier. Tarek plays the djembe in his spare time, and he offers to teach Walter, who gladly accepts. They go to Central Park one day and jam with a drum circle, and Walter cracks his first genuine smile as he assimilates into the pulsing beat. Unfortunately the happiness  is short-lived, as his new friend is halted in the subway by NYPD cops who, with a dash of racial profiling, send him to a deportment facility.

Walter is finally pushed into real action- he goes to the facility, a blank building in the middle of a slum, and tries to help Tarek out as Zainab fears the worst: deportment back to Syria. The bureaucratic entanglements make it nearly impossibly for Walter to help his friend. An immigration lawyer with far too many cases on his hands is unable to offer assistance.

McCarthy makes a point not to sugarcoat anything: cinematography, make-up, and set design all lend the film an almost documentary-like feel, and the plot moves at a pace that quietly mimics the awkwardness of reality. Perhaps most painful is the feeling of helplessness once Tarek is arrested; he is illegally “here”, but what good is “here” if we eliminate a good person such as him with a piece of paper? While straddling the fine line between drama and sermon, The Visitor actually stumbles upon some important human elements of the immigration issue. Much like 2004’s Maria Full of Grace, it puts a face on a  “hot-button” issue.

Also similar to Maria Full of Grace, the film earned an Academy Award nomination for Richard Jenkins (“Best Actor”), which is good because it gave the film some publicity. Jenkins is excellent, but Haaz Sleiman is arguably the greater star, a charismatic Syrian with a sense of resiliency even in the face of ignorance and injustice. Bringing a difficult and easily ignored issue to light, The Visitor is one of the more effective and affecting films of 2008.