Coffee and Cigarettes: Is the Emperor of Independent Film Makers gradually losing his clothes?

Rating: Null/10 (29 August 2004)

It is one of the dilemmas of the cinema and of course of novel writing as well to achieve the right balance between plausibility and entertainment, i.e. the art of making scenes from ordinary life credible without their appearing to be boring, in contrast to much of real life.
In most Hollywood films, even those with an absorbing plot, intelligent direction and accomplished actors in good form, I can't be the only one who thinks, "well, not a bad way of spending two hours but somehow nothing like life as I know it". We find the other extreme in the type of films  many of the hand-held camera school  which try so hard to be naturalistic that they lack any kind of polish or entertainment value. Whatever the problems shown, my reaction to them is, "who cares?"
So what triggered this off?  some of you will already have guessed that it was seeing Jim Jarmusch's latest film to be shown in Munich. "Coffee and Cigarettes  somewhere in California" is a series of episodes, each one lasting up to around 10 minutes (far too long in some cases) and showing two or three people in each case chatting, drinking coffee and, of course, smoking. (In most cases far more effective anti-smoking propaganda than the "smoking kills" warnings.) Of all the episodes only two in my opinion showed any kind of wit or aroused any kind of interest in the characters portrayed. (However I must confess I missed the first two.) What happened to the talent so evident in "Down by Law" and "Night On Earth"?
In the first a celebrity, played by Cate Blanchette, is having a cup of coffee in a hotel lounge with her obviously far less successful cousin from back home in Australia, before going back to her suite to be interviewed. This scene does work for me because the celebrity is obviously trying hard to be friendly and relaxed and to show a genuine empathy for the "poor relation" but not quite succeeding. And the cousin trying hard to give the impression that they really are good friends having one of their regular get-togethers and that their relationship is far more important than any differences in life-style.
Even better, again with embarrassment just below the surface, was the meeting of two British actors (somewhere in California). One has been in the States some time but, as is indicated in the conversation, has definitely passed the peak of his career. The other, younger man, however is definitely on the way up. As with the celebrity in the other episode, this actor tries to be relaxed the whole time, in spite of suspecting that the other man wants some kind of favour from him, as turns out to be the case. My favourite line in the whole film was the young actor's, "you know, I don't think I shall give you it", or words to that effect, when asked for his private telephone number.
Of all the episodes, this was the only one in my opinion to have a genuine denouement, which I shall not give away. In all the other cases the episodes came to an end more or less arbitrarily or at least without any interesting twist. Returning to my opening thoughts, this is of course true to life, but somehow rather unsatisfactory.
Apart from Cate Blanchette, Bill Murray and one or two other stars appear in the film. I wonder if they're friends of Jarmusch, who agreed to appear in an episode "just for a laugh". Whatever their motivation  or the director's  my rating is just * from 5.
Any comments welcome