Watching Jim Jarmusch's "The Limits of Control": Zen and the Art of Assassination

Mo and moi watched Jim Jarmusch's 2009 enigmatic masterpiece, "The Limits of Control," which depicts a ninja master-assassain's assignment as a kind of pilgrimage. As happens to inveterate movie watchers, my absorbent mind responded with a dream in which I attended a press conference given by a Mafia hit man. The last question he was asked is the following: "What advice do you have for all aspiring artists?" His answer: "Never let anyone make a bigger fool of you than yourself." 

The line was too good to be original but I have no recollection of ever having heard it before. In any case, it certainly explained Jarmusch's movie, which is a semi-sequel to his earlier "Ghost Dog." 

Jarmusch, like a lot of existentialists, confuses Zen masters with gunslingers and deifies focused instinct and rarefied cunning in the service of strange (as in estrangement) ends such as murder. Jarmusch's hit man is so pure with principle and practice that he tunes out anything that interferes with his assignment. This concentration makes him hyper-sensitive to the landscape (the movie was filmed in Spain), every nuance of night and day (captured beautifully by cinematographer Christopher Doyle, who worked for years with Wong Kar-Wai). Because what Jarmusch calls "the optics of the movie" (i.e., characterization) are the interface between the assassin and the world, the viewer sees and learns only what the protagonist needs to perceive and know to carry out his assignment. Nothing else enters his mind; nothing else matters. All is the mechanics of the job. Thus the movie seems thin in plot. But actually it is very rich in it. 

Quite frankly, I have never seen anything like this film. The closest I know of anyone like Jarmusch is Jean-Pierre Melville, Jarmusch's French 'noir' predecessor who made movie after movie about ninja gangsters who are always undone by human failings such as loyalty. Jarmusch's hit man is a loner who is beyond any self-endangerment of failure, malpractice or even guilt. 

Personally, I think it is time to make movies about real-deal Zen masters not gunslingers. Start with "Zen and the Art of Archery" or the journals of haiku-master Basho who is on assignment--but only to perfect the poetry that records the perceptual prowess of the liberated man. Nothing dies except ignorance. Everyone watching or listening or read is saved. Am I asking for a moral cinema? Yes. But until it comes along, Jarmusch is helping clarify major moral issues.