According to Jim Jarmusch, Nikola Tesla saw the Earth as a musical instrument, “a conductor of acoustical resonance.” Everything reverberates and resonates, forming echoes of ideas, conversations, and stray thoughts that recur like musical motifs refracted and reflected in an infinite number of variations throughout the world at different places in space and time. Everything, then, is universal and interconnected, and this stands at the core of Jarmusch’s work in general, and Coffee and Cigarettes (2003) and Night on Earth (1991) in particular.
Through
chronicling how people interact with each other and the unexpected
relationships that they form, the writer/director creates a worldwide feeling
of kinship and community. These simple moments between characters are unhurried
and sometimes clumsy, celebrating the little things that bring us together.
Like Jun in the director’s Mystery Train
(1989)—who took pictures of hotel rooms and train stations because those are
the things he would forget—Jarmusch records the seemingly insignificant details
of everyday life that generally go unnoticed and reminds us of their importance
and meaning. He finds beauty in odd places at unlikely moments and transforms
the visual commonplace into something haunting, mysterious, and new.
