The Limits of Control (2009)
Directed by Jim Jarmusch
A mysterious stranger works outside the law and keeps his objectives hidden, trusting no one. While his demeanor is paradoxically focused and dreamlike all at once, he embarks on a journey that not only takes him across Spain, but also through his own consciousness.
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What critics compared The Limits of Control to
They don’t, however, and this is where Jarmusch differs from Antonioni: Antonioni formed architectural commentaries around characters cipher-like but fully integrated into their surroundings (The Passenger, Antonioni’s largely Spanish-set anti-thriller, is a masterpiece of undermined subjectivity and metaphysical longing that The Limits of Control doesn’t even approach); Jarmusch’s Lone Man is simply a cipher, and the world around him doesn’t echo or counterpoint any actual qualities he might possess.
Even his disappointing 2009 film, "The Limits of Control," contained little moments of beauty, wordless poetic touches, observations and flashes of longing that suggested the emotional origins of its inspiration.
Writer and director Jim Jarmusch ( Broken Flowers , The Limits of Control) has been nurturing Only Lovers Left Alive for seven years, and it shows the kind of creativity and perseverance that qualifies it to be on our early list as one of the Most Spiritually Literate Films of 2014.
But there’s much to admire here (every performer in it both surprises and engages), and it is a fun movie to just luxuriate in — particularly when compared to Jarmusch’s last effort, the crushingly monotonous The Limits of Control.
It is absolutely and unequivocally a Jim Jarmusch picture, at any rate, infinitely friendlier than his last film, The Limits of Control , but not in the least ways suggesting that he's seen a reason to alter or modulate the beyond-deadpan sense of humor and enthusiasm for squatting quietly to the side and allowing scenes to build up slowly through character behavior rather than plot concerns, the two traits which more than anything have dominated his entire career as a filmmaker.
When Jim Jarmusch last made a film, 2009’s The Limits Of Control , his hipster cool looked at risk of freezing in its self-awareness.
Back on track after the misfiring über-cool of The Limits Of Control , Jarmusch delivers a passionate and consummately chic essay on science, music, time and above all love.
Whether it’s Mystery Train , Dead Man, Ghost Dog , The Limits of Control or Only Lovers Left Alive , they’re movies populated by self-contained, romantic (but rarely carnal) loners who inhabit strangely deserted and melancholy landscapes.
In Jarmusch's case, all you need to watch is his 2009 movie "The Limits of Control", which should have been named "The Limits of a Moviegoer's Patience".
The style is notably softer than his recent films “Only Lovers Left Alive” and “The Limits of Control.”
In his Village Voice review of Jim Jarmusch’s criminally under-appreciated The Limits of Control, J. Hoberman described the director as “a full-blown talent [who] erupts once a decade: Stranger than Paradise in the ’80s, Dead Man in the ’90s and The Limits of Control [in the ’00s].”
In 2009’s “ The Limits of Control ” he posited the imaginative realm as one in which an individual could not just escape political oppression but also effectively obliterate it.
His quieter films — Stranger Than Paradise , Down by Law , Mystery Train , Dead Man , Ghost Dog , and Broken Flowers — tend to be better than his talkier ones, like Night on Earth, Coffee and Cigarettes , etc. (We will have to leave The Limits of Control up for debate.)