Mystery Train [DVD] [1989]

I saw this fabulous film at the cinema when it came out, and the first mini-story with the Japanese couple is a wonderful and heartwarmingly deadpan bit of comedy; their dialogue is superb. My dissappointment at discovering this edition has no subtitles was therefore huge, and it more or less ruins the film for me. If you understand (or are) Japanese you'll have no problem. Why on earth have they omitted subtitles on DVD? It seems insane to me. If you love Jarmusch as I do, then write to MGM and ask them to amend this stupid oversight. I'm certainly not buying 'Night On Earth' until a subtitled edition is available.

Mystery Train was the follow-up to his early works, the student feature Permanent Vacation (once shown on Channel4, who like to show repeats of Graham Norton now instead), 1984's debut proper Stranger Than Paradise & its follow-up Down By Law- which was another joy featuring Tom Waits & Roberto Benigni.

Mystery Train is a film that few appear to be aware of- facets such as it's structure, the quirky fools who occur, the ghost of Elvis & its hotel locale will be familiar to viewers of Tarantino's True Romance and (especially) Pulp Fiction. Here we get three stories set in Memphis, the film beginning with the arrival of a train & ending with its departing to the classic Elvis song of the same name. Story #1 sees Jarmusch employ his love of world cinema- looking at Memphis through Foreign eyes, we follow a Japanese couple (Masatoshi Nagase & Youki Kudoh) as they come to the home of Elvis. They visit Sun studios, argue about who was more important: Elvis or Carl Perkins, smoke cigarettes & eventually arrive at a sleazy downtown hotel (where the night clerk & bellboy are Screamin' Jay Hawkins & Cinque Lee- who connect the stories). They then settle in for the night, an almost surreal scene occurs where Nagase puts on his girlfiend's make-up. & later, a shot rings out...

The second story is like an inversion of Billy Wilder's Avanti, Benigni's wife Nicoletta Braschi plays an Italian window transporting her husband's body home- having to stay for a night in Memphis, she is grifted for a shaggy dog story about Elvis as a ghost-hitchhiker, prior to coming across a slighted girlfriend of a character from the third story- they both decide to split a room in the same downtown hotel, where the ghost of Elvis appears and a shot rings out...

Finally the third story sees the wonderful Steve Buscemi go to the aid of his sister's jilted boyfriend- played by the late, great Joe Strummer. There are some knowing references to Strummer's Elvis hairstyle & him being a Brit & along with Rufus Thomas, the three go on an adventure that leads to armed robbery, that leads to a hotel where a shot will ring out & the stories all converge...

Mystery Train is an excellent film, another of Jarmusch's great films fit to stand next to his early work & such later joys as Night on Earth, Dead Man & Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai. Added to that, the soundtrack has a great version of 'I've Put a Spell On You' by Tom Waits. There's a difference between Tarantino & Jarmusch- the former is just an imitator, the latter is a pioneer. This film demonstrates why...