The Limits Of Control

Reposting messages which were deleted when another recently person deleted her account

This may ruffle feathers, so be it.

What you said, definitely, and, in my opinion, Jarmusch was also alluding to the American film viewer, or, more appropriately, the American mindset, a brain locked against art appreciation and intellectual thought.

A brain as blank and interpretable as the compound Bill Murray was hunkered down and hiding in, a brain responding only to machinery/computers/power controls and blocking out all else, but a brain just as deadly as the armed guards and helicopters defending the compound, a brain capable of destroying the artist and the artwork, but a brain not capable of destroying the imagination (the limits of control).

Jarmusch was telling Americans who resist "art" films and art in general, no matter how much you resist, no matter how you fortify your minds against art, no matter what weapons you wield, no matter your guns or censorship or control of the film industry's major studios and financiers, no matter how much you dismiss creativity and imagination as incoherent pretentious mumbo jumbo, no matter how much you claim it needs subtitles or else it's incoherent, claim the plot needs decrypting or else it's incomprehensible, no matter what the resistance, there's a limit to your resistance: the art still penetrates the mind because it's already there in the mind, it's already there waiting to be articulated, it's the unconscious awaiting to be made in light, the thought shatters and reshapes and shatters again the limits of reality, you can't tell a Michelangelo to chisel a David down to living room size any more than you can limit thought.

It's a put down of the American approach to understanding, decoding, and appreciating art, and it's also a put down of how Americans are failing to appreciate life in general, how Americans are known for placing more emphasis on machinery and power and control than on art, music, literature, memory, visions/hallucinations, etc, and how Americans have failed to recognize the symbiotic relationship between art and science.

Duly note when I use the term "Americans", I mean in general, not all Americans. There are plenty of Americans, some right here on this board, who are thrilled by the beauty of this film and love it as much as I.

Flamenco scene - Blasphemy to omit it. The human body the instrument, the human body playing itself (dancer). Highly disciplined musical and dance form - the epitome of quality music. Emotionally rich experience of public fraternity, far more emotionally rewarding than stadium concerts and clubbing. The guitar-playing and dancing both operating, like art, like cinema, as sacraments through which the soul of Andalusian social life and cultural history is remembered and played out. Remember every note that's ever been played on them is still inside of them, resonating in the molecules of the wood. Every breath of life and thought and feeling of the guitarist and dancer and history of Spain and Andalusians and the Gypsies is still alive, crying to be heard, the guitar and body conduits for releasing the cry and allowing the past to live again. The type of flamenco form portrayed in the film a spiritual-religious experience. And there's obviously a powerful male-female dynamic at work. The male's part (perhaps the Lone Man...) is dark, intense, but cool, the female's part (the Nude and the Blonde and Molecules), sensual, erotic, abandonment, abstract body movements like abstract thought, hot, frenzy. This isn't well thought-out, just rambling, but at one point in Spain's history, when Spain's political landscape was fractured and their economy gutted, Federico García Lorca and Manuel De Falla and other intellectuals of Spain felt that Spanishc culture, particularly flamenco music recognized as Spain's national music - was lascivious and morally bankrupt, and a leading cause of Spain's political corruption, and they determined to reconfigure and reinvigorate and redeem Spain's culture, including flamenco. Flamenco, on a basic level, a reference to people scapegoating art as the reason for moral/social/political corruption, and using that reason to censor/eliminate/dumb down art, but it's much more than that because the art in question is a religious experience to behold as well as one the most recognized elements of Spain's national identity. Denying flamenco is to deny the identity, the very existence, of Spain.

Oftentimes artistic expression is a religious/spiritual experience and an expression of national identity, and when attacked in any way, equates to the death of faith and spirituality and the culture itself, the death of the identity of the person, of the nation of people, of the country.

The Lone Man is the Lack, he's the antithesis of flamenco, and his quest is the restoration of everything flamenco embodies.

Remember the American saying how art and bohemianism sicken and pollute our minds. In America (and Europe...), many people demanding that Hispanics, Arabs, Muslims, Russians, Cubans, Haitians, Asians, American Indians, others, leave their cultures behind and learn English and assimilate American ways and embrace American "culture", or get out of the country. Flamenco, polluting our minds with its lasciviousness, so stamp it out. But you can't, it's part of one's national, ethnic, and spiritual identity.

Also, flamenco is a rigorously structured and disciplined and controlled art form, yet it's the quintessence of epiphany and improvisation and free form. It's controlled, slowed down, deeply meditative, trance-like, but the crushing nature of the control and the strenuous attention given to every movement of muscle creates high adrenaline, exalted epiphanies, new planes of creativity, unexpected improvisations, the desire to break free, etc. A fusion and balance of the controlled (structure, composition) and the uncontrolled (passion, energy, creativity)

Notice the flamenco sequence was the only time Lone Man he smiled, deriving pleasure from this fusion/balance. Joy because the flamenco performance was proof that his journey to reorient his psyche towards creativity, imagination, and spirituality would succeed.

The names also represent stereotypical characters found in films, especially films of the Western genre - the Lone Man, the Blonde, the Nude, the Mexican, and the representations are, as you noted, the quintessentially perfect Platonic "ideal form" of that stereotype. Stereotypical musical cues are represented by the Guitar the Violin. Molecules is the quintessential koan meaning which cannot be understood through ratiocination alone, the light of meaning which can only be glimpsed through intuition, much like "level four" of Plato's divided line theory (pure forms, wisdom, divinity, G-d) can only be glimpsed.

The character names are as abstracted as the paintings in the film, the character names are perhaps meant to convey that people are just as abstracted and fractalled and fractured and complex and mystifying as art.

Abstract paintings fracture one's perception of established physical properties of an object, the abstraction fractures your thought process and your emotional state, just as abstract character names and abstract characterizations fracture one's perception of standard characterizations.

The "reality is subjective" theme in the film is also derived from the body of Buddhist thought centering upon precepts like 'reality is nothing and nothing is reality', 'the imagined view of reality does not give us a true knowledge of it', 'things neither exist nor do not exist', 'life is the same as death', 'sensory perception is an illusion', 'ego is not different from non-ego', 'characteristics are no-characteristics', 'reality is an illusion', etc. Teachings found within the Surangama Sutra, the Lankavatara Sutra, and the Diamond Sutra. The type of Buddhist thought that ripples joyfully through Plato's philosophy.

Had much more to say, but lost it when clicking 'post reply' resulted in the "ooops something is broken" IMDb page, and clicking back, only the emptiness of the glowing white box.