• Mystery Train

7/27/22 (Wed)

Jim Jarmusch’s 1989 flick is an omnibus with three self-contained stories that share a location in a seedy hotel in Memphis, Elvis portraits and his rendition of “Blue Moon”, foreigners (Japanese, Italian, British), and a gunshot. All stories are haunted by the spirit of Elvis to an extent, one quite literally, as a virtual symbol of the city.

I was surprised to find that the first section is almost entirely in Japanese with two well-known Japanese stars, Kudoh Youki and Nagase Masatoshi. A woman and her rockabilly boyfriend have come to Memphis from Yokohama to pay homage to their musical idols: she worships Elvis (she carries a scrapbook of photos comparing the King to Buddha, the Statue of Liberty and Madonna, among others), while he idolizes Carl Perkins to the extent of dressing Harajuku-style like a parody of a 50s rocker. After a visit to Sun Studios (where they don’t understand a word of the guide’s rapid spiel), they wander the streets of a rundown neighborhood with a suitcase sporting a Japanese Carl Perkins sticker and end up in the $22-per-night fleabag hotel, where they tip the bellboy with a Japanese plum.

In the second part, an Italian woman who’s come to retrieve her late husband’s body finds herself stuck in Memphis due to a cancelled flight. After encountering a scammer in a lonely restaurant who claims to have met Elvis’ ghost and walking past some suspicious characters on the street, she takes refuge in the hotel, where she ends up spending the night with a garrulous woman on the run from her boyfriend. She has a vision of Elvis in the middle of the night.

In the last, most substantial and funniest story, two men try to console their pistol-packing British friend after he has lost both his job and girlfriend on the same day. They end up driving aimlessly in the streets, and their drunken adventures thereafter lead to murder and a desperate night in that same hotel as they decide what to do. The British guy eventually tries to shoot himself but accidentally shoots his hapless friend instead in the leg – explaining the gunshot that makes an appearance in all the stories.

The stories overlap in subtle and not-so-subtle ways: the Japanese couple speak with the ex-girlfriend on the train, the Italian woman hears the couple bonking in the next room and spots one of the trio on the street talking to his car, the distraught boyfriend is unknowingly spending the night just a few rooms away from his ex. But none of the characters from any of the stories interact with those from other stories in any meaningful way, and none of the stories comment on any other. I felt sure that the sighting of Elvis by the Italian woman would turn out to be the broken-hearted British guy from the next room, who is in fact nicknamed Elvis, but Jarmusch resisted that urge; the strange vision passes and is never referred to again. There’s a Groundhog Day feeling with the repeat of the DJ’s chat and playing of “Blue Moon”, drawing us back to the same time (2:17am, to be precise) for each story. Jarmusch also occasionally reruns precisely the same scene and dialogue in the context of the varied stories, notably the hilarious banter between the seen-it-all hotel clerk and young bellboy. The sequences are parallel lines passing through the same time and place. All depend to some extent on foreign misunderstandings, including the British guy who doesn’t recognize references to the old TV series Lost in Space. In the end, all leave town: the Japanese and girlfriend are on the same train, the former going to their next musical destination and the latter running away to her relatives’ home; the Italian rushes to catch her plane back to Rome; and the three men are racing to points unknown to escape the police. Only the hotel remains as part of their collective memory.

This is not the Memphis that I’m familiar with; with the dilapidated buildings and deserted streets, I thought at first that it was supposed to be a scene from the 1950s. The director ably gives us a triple perspective of this spot: the couple who have dreamed of the city, the woman who happens to get caught there, and the trio and ex-girlfriend who live there. The repeated scene of the passing train, the instrument bringing people into the city and taking them away again, is especially evocative.

The stories vary in quality. The trite dialogue between the Japanese tourists, their corny language mishaps (such as mistaking Natchez for matches), and their vapidity are not particularly realistic, reflecting a worn-out stereotype of the clueless foreigner. Their mulling over Yokohama and Memphis Stations was dumb, no Japanese woman is dense enough to offer a plum as a tip, no one in the 1980s is going to march around a crummy part of a US town at night lugging a suitcase – and I could go on. The characters themselves are appealing, especially the scene where the girl is trying to cheer up her perpetually glum boyfriend by making faces and smearing lipstick on him. (Still sulky, he responds, “I can’t help it; this is my face.”) He also has a great moment when he is looking out reverently from his hotel window out at Memphis; despite the squalidness of that part of the city, he sees a rock version of Mecca. It’s lifted by memorable performances by Nagase and especially the perky Kudoh (who in real life speaks amazingly good English).

The second story manages more deftly to be a realistic version of weird. The Italian woman’s encounters with scam artists and suspicious characters – the newspaper seller, the entertaining tall tale in the diner about the message from Elvis, the brooding men in the streets – are all credible and the funnier for it. The super-talkative ex-girlfriend who ends up rooming with her is a great touch, and her reaction to the specter of Elvis is priceless.

The distraught Englishman is first found waving his gun around in a predominantly black bar, where the main reaction among the staff and billiard-playing customers is a roll of the eyes. (Race interestingly plays no role here as usually happens with movies set in the South; it’s just an added detail.) Their conversation throughout is classic, especially Charlie’s shock on learning that the guy is not in fact his brother-in-law at all. The perpetually exasperated Charlie, who would have been played by Don Knotts in a different generation, tries to be a voice of sanity but doesn’t stand a chance.

The hotel clerk and bellboy offer a riotous interlude between the stories. Their deadpan reaction to events is a sight to behold; I’m surprised they didn’t get a spinoff TV series. Their presence is essential to ground us in time and place, but their dialogue goes beyond the call of duty. I imagine this was an inspiration for Tarentino.

Various musicians also appear in the piece in a touch of meta-theater appropriate for the setting. Rufus Thomas bums a light from the unaware Japanese couple in the station (thanking them with an “arigato”), Tom Waits voices the DJ, the British drunk is Joe Strummer of the Clash, and the inimitable Screamin’ Jay Hawkins plays the hotel clerk.

Nicoletta Braschi (wife of actor Roberto Benigni) is great as the Italian tourist, and Hawkins and Cinque Lee (brother of Spike – their parents had a sense of humor) are irreplaceable as the desk staff. Best of all is Steven Buscemi as the Milquetoast-like Charlie, who steals every scene he’s in. It’s hard to know what the film is getting at with this triple structure, but after a slow start, it proves a fun romp.