Down By Law Year: 1986 - Black Snake/Grokenberger Film Production  Director: Jim Jarmusch  Screenplay: Jim Jarmusch  Cinematography: Robby Müller  Starring: John Lurie, Tom Waits, Roberto Benigni, Ellen Barkin, Nicoletta Braschi, and Billie Neal

As a symbolic allegory, this film deals with Death, Hell, and Redemption. The opening shot is of a hearse and cemetery.  The camera pans past the cemetery's memorials and mausoleums, and then past rows of small shacks and houses that look similar to those structures that house the dead in the previous shot. The setting is New Orleans, where people bury their dead above the ground, and where two of the movie's characters seemed to be already burying themselves in their squalid lives.

Zack, played by Tom Waits, is an often-fired, presently unemployed DJ whose on-air moniker is Lee Baby Simms.  Zack is a good DJ who is constantly losing jobs because he won't play along with management.  As his girlfriend says, he just needs to "jerk people off" and everything would be fine.  He sees himself as an iconoclastic hero. His bosses obviously see him as a guy with a bad attitude. His girlfriend Laurette, played by Ellen Barkin, is totally fed up with his lack of judgment and throws him out of their apartment. The scene were Laurette tosses all of Zack's records, clothes, and other possessions out of their second-story apartment window, while she screams and beats on the sullen Zack is one of the film's best. She doesn't get any reaction out of Zack until she grabs his favorite shoes.  After a brief struggle over the shoes, Zack lets her have them and she throws them out into the night.  All Zack can manage to say is a feeble, "I guess it's over between us Laurette." On the dirty street, among the garbage and wreckage of his worldly possessions, Zack shines up his favorite shoes and puts them on his feet. He is more concerned with style and personal image than anything else in the world.

John Lurie plays Jack, a small-time pimp who has illusions of becoming a rich hustler. The main problem with Jack is that he is not very good at his chosen occupation.  Jack is in love with the fantasy of what he imagines the life of a big-time pimp is supposed to be. Meanwhile, he is getting nowhere.  He spends all of his money on gambling, drugs and clothes.  His hookers always end up strung out on drugs; yet, he seems oblivious to the reality of his situation.

Zack and Jack are each, seperately, entrapped and arrested due to their own greed and vanity. Symbolically, the men who entrap them are manifestations of the devil, using flattery and sweet words to seduce them into foolishly giving up their freedom.  For Zack and Jack, their arrests and imprisonment is effectively their Death and descent into Hell. While not guilty of the crimes they were arrested for, their lives were already condemned to a slow death anyway.

We see Zack in prison first.  Alone in his cell, the enormity of his situation is evident on his face.  He passes the time staring and rocking on his bunk, occasionally shaking his head in disbelief.  After several days, Jack joins him in the cell.  Immediately, Zack changes his behavior. He starts a macho posturing toward Jack, to which Jack response in kind.  In this society of two individuals, neither man lets down their cool facade. Although in constant contact, they rarely talk to each other.  Finally, each man reveals their dreams and aspirations to the other.  Zack does is DJ rap for Jack, and Jack talks about his dreams of being a wealthy pimp on the outside, with the beautiful women, limousines, drugs, and extraneous luxuries he believes come with it. Each belittle the other's occupation which leads to more hostility between the two.  They finally come to blows over a most trivial incident.

The inspiration for Down By Law was one of Jarmusch's favorite Lee Marvin pictures, Hell In The Pacific. In that film, Lee Marvin and Toshirô Mifune play an American flyer and a Japanese soldier stranded on a Pacific island together during World War II.  Rather than face the reality of their situation, the two men continue to fight a private war between themselves, even though they are hundreds of miles from the real war. Their self-identities are totally defined by their occupations as soldiers and adversaries. Unlike the damned in Hell In The Pacific, Jarmusch sends an angel to save the two prisoners.
 
Enter the new prisoner, Roberto Benigni, as Bob. Benigni, from this point on steals the rest of the movie. Unlike his two cellmates, Zack and Jack, Bob is honest, open and outwardly good-natured. He puts on no false front like Jack and Zack. To help him converse with American men, Bob has a little notebook in which he writes down all of the pat little sayings that tough guys use all of the time in the place of real conversation. Bob spouts these out at appropriate and inappropriate times.  Jarmusch uses this device to poke fun at the cliché-filled dialogue of American hard-boiled crime movies. Bob uses such phrases as, "If looks could kill, I would already be a dead man," and "Too small to swing a cat!" Bob has observed that for most men, conversations and interactions are reduced to well-worn phrases. Real intimacy and conversation would fracture the facade of each man.  As Bob tries to talk to his cool and silent cellmates, he gets their names confused because they are so similar in both name and attitude. Bob finally resorts to having a conversation with himself about Walt Whitman.  Zack and Jack only start warming up to Bob when he confesses that he ended up in prison for killing a man in self-defense. They even take to all playing cards together, although Zack and Jack seem to only bound by mutually poking fun at Bob.  Finally, one day, Bob tells his friends about a way he has discovered to escape from prison. They all three make their break for freedom into the swamps of Louisiana.

Even though the trio is out in the wilds of the Louisiana backcountry, psychologically, they still carry their prison cell with them in their minds.  Jarmusch drives home this point throughout the remainder of the film. A terrified non-swimming Bob is abandoned at river by his two companions who seem to take the attitude of "every man for himself".  As the dogs approach closer and closer, and it looks like Bob will be recaptured; Zack, in a act of loyalty to his friend, returns alone to help Bob across the water.  Zack could not assist Bob with Jack present for fear of appearing soft front of Jack.  Jarmusch even has the trio spend the night in a one room shack that looks just like their prison cell, complete with two sets of bunk beds.  All during their flight from the law, Jack and Zack continue to fight for dominance, while they wander in the wilderness in circles.

Only after Zack and Jack allow Roberto to lead do the trio find shelter.  They find themselves outside a little roadside restaurant called, "Luigi's Tin Roof".  Too frightened to enter the restaurant, but unwilling to show it, Jack and Zack send Bob to check things out.  He boldly walks to the front of the restaurant and enters while his cowardly companions, (who think Bob the fool) hide in the bushes.  When Bob does not return after hours have passed, Zack and Jack get curious. They sneak up to the diner and peek through the window where they see Bob being served diner by a young woman (Nicoletta Braschi).  Bob's adventurous and out-going spirit is rewarded with good fortune. The woman is the owner and is a single Italian woman who is quite taken with Bob.  She wants Bob to stay with her forever.  She welcomes Zack and Jack, and all have a fine diner and breakfast together the next morning.  Bob and Nicoletta seem quite happy together.

The example of Bob has literally shown Zack and Jack a way out of their Hell.  They can see that their cynical, loner attitudes have not served them well. If not for Bob, they would have stayed stuck in prison or died in the swamp from cold and hunger.  After their long ordeal in prison and the swamp, both are happy to accept the hospitality that friends can provide.  Donning some of cloths left to Nicoletta by her dead Uncle, Zack and Jack leave to continue their flight from the law.  When parting at a crossroads, Zack and Jack reach a crossroad in their relationship by exchanging jackets before going their separate ways. Each can start their new life having taken something from the person they thought they would be unwilling to ever gain from.

As in all of Jarmusch's films, this movie deals with the character's personal growth brought on by contact with unusual people.  If you can find this movie, I highly recommend it.  This is a fine cast and an unusual story. Filmed in glorious black and white by Robby Müller, it also demonstrates that a low budget does not have to stand in the way of good film making.

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