Resonance

Rating: Null/10 (26 January 2005)

Jarmusch's approach to film  and presumably to life  works for me in the large but not the small. I'm sure you encounter this in lots of places as well: situations, people and philosophies.
He attempts highly engineered ordinary events that have no content. That aimlessness is the point. His art is in designing the lack of ordinary film order in such an extreme but directed way so that we get the message by its omission. This technique allows him to come down on the side of characters rather than composition.
Its an old contest, usually between the orchestration of the filmmaker and the instrument of the actor. But he completely reframes the question. That's why he is important and his films, and particularly his "book" film: "Ghost Dog," should be watched.
Along the way, he's discovered that all situations are conversations and no matter how complex things get, the conversation is always between just two people. To prime his pump, he sketches, just like most artists. You have to take such sketches on their own terms, as ancillary to stuff with substance (even if with him, substance is subtraction).
Others have already told you that these sketches are uneven. There is no consistency of tone among them, in fact they are so disconnected we infer what you likely have already read: these were done across huge chasms of time, philosophy and technique, sliding into the notion of encounters and communication as resonance.
My own favorite by itself makes this worth watching. Cate Blanchett is our most accomplished "folded" actor, meaning she can convey two characters in one performance. Here, she literally plays two characters, conversing with one another. She obviously wrote the dialogue because each phase slips under the one from the companion. It is her interpretation of a Jarmusch situation: an emotional encounter drained of all the theatrical conventions of emotion. Great.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.