Art as Cinema

Rating: 10/10 (30 April 2010)

It is cinema or art? No, its Coffee & Cigarettes.
Like all great art, Coffee and Cigarettes is a deeply personal statement, and we feel privileged to share Jim Jarmusch's lens on the world.
We eavesdrop over 13 seemingly ordinary and unconnected conversations over coffee and cigarettes which start to get eerily jagged and surreal as we are drawn in.
The movie is a visual treat and its striking black and white images and stylized depictions of gritty diners linger in the mind long after the movie is over.
I love this movie for many things: the strange and sometimes bizarre characters, its quirky sense of humor, the pop culture references, the continuing obsession with Nikola Tesla, and its ability to make the twin vices of coffee and cigarettes seem sexy.
But, most of all, I love Coffee and Cigarettes because it forces the viewer to re-examine the regular and the ordinary and discover the irregular and the surreal.
If this is cinema, I could get easily addicted...