“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.”
– Jim Jarmusch
Over the last 30 years Jim Jarmusch has made a name for himself in the cinema industry by probably being the most successful and well known independent cinema director. The story of independent cinema has been long and wide and has had a lot of famous names associated with it, but none has made themselves such a symbol of independent cinema as Jarmusch.
The reason I choose this director’s work as the topic of my dissertation is because I deeply admire Jarmusch’s capability to build his name in cinema by becoming completely independent from the established studio system, allowing him to create his films and make them exactly what he wants them to be. He is probably one of the few directors who actually crafts his films like a sculpture, with his own hands and ideas and no one else’s, except the input he allows from his collaborators. But even his collaborators are hand picked and close to Jarmusch; they are people who, in a way, are a part of him. That way, even though they work in different areas, they have the same outlook on what it is to create. For this dissertation I choose to talk all of his fiction films focusing mainly on Down By Law (1986), Dead Man (1995), Ghost Dog (1999), Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) and Paterson (2016).
The first Jarmusch film I ever saw was Dead Man when I was sixteen years old and it just blew my mind. Everything was beautiful, the shots, the soundtrack, the references and mainly how he made a western become something so deep and meaningful. After that I binge-watched all of his films and each one of them had always something special that just stuck with me, but when he released Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) I completely surrendered myself, it had everything to be the perfect film for me. In reality, there aren’t many films that I can say that took my breath away, there have been only two directors who managed to that before and they were David Lynch with Mulholland Drive (2001) and Wim Wenders with Wings of Desire (1987) and Paris, Texas (1984). But, in my opinion, even though their films are almost perfect and they had such a big impact on me, Only Lovers Left Alive seemed that it was made for me. I have been ascinated by vampire culture from the moment I saw Buffy, the Vampire Slayer (1997) for the first time, when I was a little girl, and after that I watched all the vampire classics, but in more recent years it started loosing its charm, suddenly vampires turned into this lame and unbearable characters and a vampire film equaled a really bad teenage blockbuster but then Only Lovers Left Alive came out and it was nothing like I had seen before. It elevated vampires to an almost transcendental level, they were not vicious killer creatures or sparkly anymore, Jarmusch turned them into wise beings whose destiny in the world is not to kill but to absorb every culture and nowledge created by mankind.
His style is another thing that draws me to his work. I have never found an artist with whom I have so much in common as Jarmusch, from music to literature and even heroes, like for example Tom Waits, Neil Young, Patti Smith, Tilda Swinton, William Blake, William S. Burroughs , Edgar Allan Poe, the list goes on and on. I think an easy way to know is through Only Lovers Left Alive when it is shown Adam’s “Wall of Fame” (which in reality is Jarmusch’s heroes), you can see all this famous faces of artists that you can also find in my room’s wall and in my record and book collection.
Josef Van Wissem once described him as a “cultural sponge”, someone who absorbs every bit of culture and applies it to their work, hich is something I have always tried to see myself as. From a young age I have been fascinated by books, music, films, art and even science and I have always wanted to learn more and more about it. So, in a way, Jim Jarmusch is the person I want to be when I become a professional.