Coffee and cigarettes for breakfast, lunch and dinner

Rating: 10/10 (9 May 2006)

Jim Jarmusch's 2003 Coffee and Cigarettes is a pastiche of habits, stereotypes, monotypes and common sense. It's black and white and it is like a chess table with 11 sugar cubes. Each sugar cube is an individual, totally independent vignette featuring actors caring their own names. Roberto Benigni is Roberto, Steven Wright is Steven, Cate Blanchett is Cate and her cousin in the same time, Bill Murray is billmurray (one word) in a secret life as a bartender. Yes, characters are talking about coffee and cigarettes, most likely and in rest about nothing. Could be Jarmusch a big Seinfeld fan? Roberto meets Steven and keeps calling him Steve. He ends up taking his appointment to the dentist and leaves. Steven is perplex. Buscemi babbles with the Lee twins about Elvis's secret evil twin. Iggy Pop and Tom Waits they both have quit smoking. Therefore they can handle just one more cigarette happening to be on the table. Vinny and Rigano have a energetic argument about how damaging smoking is. Both have a rusty gruff voice. E J Rodriguez, as a waiter, tries to hit on Renee French. He fails sumptuously. Alex Descas and Isaach de Bankole, Frenchmen and good old friends meet after a long time and it seems that they don't have a problem. Or do they? Cate Blanchett plays herself magnificently. Make he any hair-style and will look good on her. She is also her hippy cousin. Meg and Jack White, the White Stripes "brothers" (quotes because they're not brothers, or are they?) have a conversation, after 80 seconds of silence, about his tesla coil, an air transformer device. Meg turns out to be a co-star to Jack's genius. Than we have Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan as possible cousins based on Molina's genealogic investigations. Alfred is extremely deferential. Steve hides his condescending propensity. Steve thinks Alfred wants to take advantage of him. But Alfred is honest. But there is catch. In the end the two reverse positions. How about the Wu-Tang Clan? GZA and RZA talk about alternative medicine and how to perform a surgical procedure using an electric drill-gun. Tom Waits became a doctor too. Coffee cause serious delirium. Billmurray (one word) doesn't think so and drinks from the jar. RZA explains how nicotine interferes with the central nervous system. That's paralysis. And last but not least Taylor Mead, in the final scene lost his touch with the world. Bill Rice, his partner is concerned. They listen to an imaginary Mahler, in some backyard armory. Coffee is becoming champagne, Nikola Tesla pops out in the conversation again, and they ignore their age or their Parkinson and toast for the Moulin Rouge.
Coffee and cigarettes, that such an unhealthy combination! They all agree. We all agree. Jim Jarmusch's colorful interpretation is a celebration of life!