Mystery Train

Year: 1989 - JVC Entertainment Director: Jim Jarmusch Screenplay: Jim Jarmusch Cinematography: Robby Müller  Starring: Masatoshi Nagase, Youki Kudoh, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Cinqué Lee, Nicoletta Braschi, Elizabeth Bracco, Joe Strummer, Rick Aviles, Steve Buscemi

Mystery Train is not a "slacker" film in the sense that the main characters are not slackers. Rather, I include this film in my list because it is such a great movie to watch when one is feeling in a particularly slacker mood. The movie is really a very artsy, cool, and hip comedy which derives its humor from the ironic situations and interactions of its characters during a twenty-four hour period in Memphis. If this film is about anything, it is about Elvis as a popular icon and the different perceptions of American culture. The beautiful cinematography of Robby Müller, along with the soundtrack provided by John Lurie, creates a wonderful cinematic experience. The dirty streets and poor neighborhoods of Memphis are transformed into an almost mystical backdrop for the stories. By concentrating on the least glamorous aspects of Memphis, director Jim Jarmusch provides us with a perspective much like one of the main characters of the film, who only photographs the hotel rooms, train stations, and airports of his visit to America, because those are the mundane images most likely to fade from his memory. The most famous attraction of Memphis, Graceland, is alluded to but never glimpsed in this film. By not allowing us to see Graceland, the home of the King of Rock-n'-Roll becomes like a great temple where cameras are not permitted.

The film opens with an Am Trak train arriving in Memphis. On board are two Japanese teenagers on a pilgrimage to all of the homes of the great american rock-n'-roll legends. One pilgrim, Jun, played by Masatoshi Nagase, is a tragically hip rocker, complete with a pompadour hairsyle and "Creepers" shoes.  His most prized possession is his lighter which he handles with the dexterity of a magician.  Youki Kudoh plays his girlfriend Mitzuko. Contrary to her boyfriend's cool and smug demeanor, Mitzuko is a joyous and bubbly adventurer. Together they tramp the streets of Memphis seeking Graceland and the legendary Sun Studios. The scenes of the two walking around town are perhaps the funniest images in the film. Yun and Mitzuko carry their enormous suit case between them suspended on a stick. Here is the symbol of their relationship, they are at opposite ends in behavior, yet connected by their common interest in the pilgrimage. Mitzuko adores Elvis as the "King". On the other hand, the more sophisticated Yun insists to Mitzuko that Carl Perkins was better.

With night coming on, Mitzuko and Yun find their way to the run-down Arcade Hotel. The hotel becomes a haven for all of the characters in the movie. The night clerk and bell hop, played by Screamin' Jay Hawkins and Cinqué Lee, have a natural comic chemistry which makes one suspect their scenes were improvised. The image of Elvis looks upon the hotel patrons from his portraits hanging in every room. Elvis' image is almost like that of the Buddha or Christ. In fact, Mitzuko reveals to Yun, from her scrapbook, Elvis has been present throughout history. She has a picture of a Mesopotamian ruler who resembles Elvis. The Buddha, Statue of Liberty, and even Madonna bear Elvis' likeness. These delightful and poetic insights are a wonderful complement to Yun's cool stoicism. The scenes of playful intimacy highlight the talents of Nagase and Kudoh as actors. Although they speak in Japanese most of the time, and one most follow the dialogue through sub-titles, they are able to convey most of their feelings with subtle gestures and expressions. For older audience members, they remind us what it was like to be eighteen and very much in love. Nagase and Kudoh are very funny in this film, yet their characters come across as very charming and very cool.

When morning comes, Yun and Mitzuko are startled by the sound of a gunshot. They shrug it off as a very common occurrence in America. From here the movie shifts to the story of another two characters. I have to say I was a little disappointed that the story leaves the Japanese youths for a while. I would not have minded if the entire film followed them across country. However, the narrative shifts to the story of a recently widowed Italian woman, Luisa, played by Nicoletta Braschi. She is flying the body of her husband back to Italy and is stranded in Memphis for the day due to problems with her flight. Strangely, she is not dressed in morning for her departed mate. She looks and acts like she is on a vacation. Instead of staying put at the airport, Luisa decides to explore the city. Whereas, for the young Japanese couple Memphis was a wondrous, fantasy land; for Luisa the city is filled with people ready to prey upon her submissive nature. Stopping at a newsstand to purchase a local paper she ends up buying an unwanted and burdensome stack of magazines just to please the news vendor. Later that evening in a diner, a local yahoo tries to sell her Elvis' comb after relating to Luisa the oft told urban legend of the ghostly hitch-hiker, with the apparition of Elvis as the protagonist. She pays him twenty dollars to get rid of him but he later pursues her outside the diner. She finds refuge at the nearby Arcade Hotel where she ends up sharing a room a loquacious young woman. The woman, Dee Dee, portrayed by Elizabeth Bracco, has just left her boyfriend Johnny and needs a place to spend the night. As Dee Dee goes on and on about her relationship with Johnny, it becomes evident that there was not much love left in Luisa's marriage. When the two woman overhear a couple making love in the next room, the audience realizes that the couple having sex is Jun and Mitzuko, and that this story is contemporaneous with the previous one. Elvis singing Blue Moon on the radio in this story, as in the Japanese couple's  narrative, transfixes the characters like a hymn of love. As Dee Dee drifts off to sleep, the ghost of Elvis appears before Lucia. He is puzzled and apologetic for disturbing a woman in her bedroom. Oddly, the ghost of Elvis is the only being in Memphis that treats Lucia with respect. Lucia spends the rest of the night awake in bed waiting for the miracle to repeat. As the two women are ready to part in the morning, Lucia pays for the room herself and gives Dee Dee two hundred dollars to help her on her way. The mysterious gunshot is heard just as it was by the Japanese youths. Lucia removes her wedding ring from her finger and then gives her hotel room one last departing glance. She has decided to move on with her life.

The final part of the film opens with Dee Dee's boyfriend, Johnny, drunk and despondent in an Afro-American bar. Besides having Dee Dee leave him, Johnny has just been laid-off that day. When he starts brandishing a gun, it is obvious that the Arcade Hotel is in Johnny's future. Johnny is what Yun may have turned out to be if Yun had over-stayed his visit to Memphis. Johnny is from England and dresses in the 50's rocker fashion. He prefers the company of Blacks to Whites, yet his Black friends make fun of his dress and manners by calling him Elvis. Once a great fan of the King, Johnny has found the harsh realities of Elvis' beloved Memphis. Racism, poverty, unemployment, and loneliness make up the unglamorous backdrop for the rock-'n-roll movement of the 1950's. Just as the aging Elvis became a parody of his younger self, Johnny is a parody of the younger and hipper rock-a-billy devotee, Yun. Johnny is aptly played by ex-Clash front man.

When Johnny becomes too quarrelsome, one of the bar patrons calls up one of Johnny's friends, Will Robinson, and Dee Dee's brother Charlie. Rick Aviles plays Will Robinson and Steve Buscemi makes one of his early film appearances as Charlie. Charlie is a barber from New Jersey who moved to Memphis with his sister Dee Dee. Thinking that Dee Dee and Johnny are married, he feels obligated to help Johnny. Unlike the foreign characters in the film, Charlie is very uneasy in the poor, black neighborhoods of Memphis. He is soon an unwilling fugitive with Johnny and Will after Johnny decides to rob and shoot a liquor store clerk. Not knowing what to do, the three outlaws drive around and around the city most of the night. Eventually all three, now very drunk and tired, end up at the Arcade Hotel where they are given, as a free favor to Will, a trashed, unused, and seemingly cursed room for the night. Even this wreck of a room has a picture of Elvis. Johnny can't escape the reminders of the ideal he used to emulate. He sinks lower into despair admitting to Charlie that he and Dee Dee were never married. When morning breaks,  Johnny is suicidal and the mystery of the gunshot is finally revealed. This results in Charlie uttering perhaps the funniest line in the movie: "You fuckin' shot me! I don't believe this! You're not even by brother-in-law and now you fuckin' shot me!" Yet, maybe if not for the over-seeing presence of Elvis in the hotel, Johnny would have died.

The movie ends with all of the principles leaving Memphis, their lives changed either subtly or profoundly by their previous night in the city of The King.

Internet Movie Database 

* drive around and around - Anyone who at one time considered themselves a slacker knows all about driving nowhere at night for hours on end. back