Revisiting COFFEE AND CIGARETTES: Brilliantly About Nothing

Coffee and Cigarettes – a compilation of 11 film etudes, linked by loose frameworks of an aesthetic nature, is a continuous and long-term process. Jarmusch initiated it in 1986 with the short film Strange to Meet You, made for the needs of the show Saturday Night Live, with Roberto Benigni and Steven Wright in the main, and only, roles. It was a terse little tale about nothing, taking place at a café table, with a cup of coffee and an ashtray full of cigarette butts.

In the company of cigarette fumes and emptying cups of black liquid, the characters carried out a funny and engaging dialogue, just like that, for relaxation, after which they parted ways. In 1989, on the occasion of shooting Mystery Train, the next film emerged – Twins, with the as usual brilliant Steve Buscemi. The entire prop set of Strange to Meet You appeared here as well. Thus there was a table, hectoliters of consumed coffee with a break for a cigarette, and a piece of interesting conversation, this time something a’la Tarantino, that is, the matter of Elvis the King Presley’s obesity. At that very moment, a long-term plan was born to shoot an entire series of short films over coffee and cigarettes.

Jarmusch recruited his friends known from earlier collaborations – Isaach de Bankolé, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, RZA, GZA, and the rest volunteered on their own. From then on, events unfolded at a truly lightning pace – Jarmusch shot the last six films in barely two weeks. This assembly-line production, however, did not serve the enterprise well. The films are uneven; surely anyone who has seen the whole has created their own ranking of these substance-infused etudes, finding in the atmospheric café both the great ones and the… less great ones. To put it aside – there are a few cinematic missteps that slightly disrupt the reception of the whole.

For example, I myself would place on the black-as-coffee list Jack Shows Meg His Teslacoil, Delirium, or Twins, though being full of admiration for the modest but vivid roles of Bill Ghostbuster, Groundhog Day Murray chugging coffee straight from the kettle, and Steve Buscemi in a pathetic little apron. However, setting aside the weaker moments and focusing on the very essence and smoke of Coffee and Cigarettes, we arrive at the main theme and asset of this, however you look at it, unusual and intriguing cinematic creation – that is – the atmosphere.

The first thing that catches the eye and aggressively attacks the pupils is the aesthetics of the cinematography and the set design. The contrast of black and white – black coffee and a white cigarette, the constantly appearing checkerboard pattern, the play of light and shadow, finally the black-and-white image straight out of Dead Man. This device gives the café meeting the dimension of everyday life and an ordinary activity. Just an ordinary day, we meet and we talk.

By atmosphere I mean what happens during this meeting – interaction occurs, often extremely interesting, even exotic, and it must be said that Jarmusch is a Master in building interpersonal relations, spontaneous dialogue, and creating that specific aura of ferment and spark between speakers! He proved it, among other things, in Night on Earth and Ghost Dog, where he was able to create a noble friendship between characters who did not understand what the other was saying at all!

It is delightful to watch, the dialogues are funny, absurd, but also intelligent, reflective, no less accurate are the character matchups and the situations in which they have to exist. Imagine a beautiful girl, sipping coffee with a dash of nicotine extract, looking through a magazine with revolver models, and then a dimwitted, pushy waiter trying to chat her up, constantly refilling her coffee. She gives him the look of a murderer, because the coffee she was drinking was perfect, the proportions of cream, sugar, and coffee were correct, and he botched it. The whole charm of Coffee and Cigarettes.

This beautiful girl is the enigmatic Renée French. Through my own private investigation I learned that she is a respected comic book illustrator (who, by the way, produces quite intriguing works). A distinctive little treat of the film is tea instead of coffee in the excellent Cousins? with Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan. Since both are British actors, it would have been silly to give them coffee to drink! But that is the only departure from the rule of the café table, coffee, and cigarettes.

What great message is hidden in the fumes of the two greatest stimulants of our time? Well, none in particular; it is nonsense to claim that this is a film for the advanced, analytical viewer, with completed film studies and an IQ surpassing that of Sharon Stone. For me, this film is above all relaxation, a set of images unconnected plotwise, joined by a specific atmosphere. An atmosphere of respite and free reflection in the quiet of a café.

There is time to chat, to laugh, to smoke a cigarette and take a sip of coffee, with a few old tracks by The Stooges playing in the background. No one is in a hurry, we savor the static gameplay on the field of intoxicating conversation, often heading toward the limits of absurdity and lack of conclusion, as in real life, in a real meeting.

Simply to sit, to talk, just like Vincent Vega and Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction. Coffee and Cigarettes relaxes, it is entertainment and a cinematic connoisseur’s indulgence, light and addictive like cigarettes, like coffee, like the cinema of Jim Jarmusch.