Quite apart from its muted lo-fi charm, it’s intriguing to contemplate what marked Stranger Than Paradise out as the work of a filmmaker who would go on to become an undisputed star of the independent circuit. What one notes is that, beneath the apparently messy veneer, there’s a straightforward but effective narrative discipline at play. The film is divided into three parts (or acts), in New York, Cleveland and Florida. The first act introduces the characters and sets up the dynamic between Eva, the Hungarian cousin, and Willie, the good-looking but aimless protagonist. The second act develops this relationship, and the third brings it to some kind of resolution. Nothing is ever on the nose, there’s never any great sense of purpose, but the film’s structural integrity prevents it from feeling aimless or overly self-indulgent. Add to this the bewitching charm of grainy black and white, off-beat characterisation, Screaming Jay Hawkins and a dry cinematic wit and you have the recipe for a sleeper hit. I overhead someone coming out of the cinemas saying, this is the model for so many indie films, including 25 Watts, and they’re right. Stranger than Paradise and Down by Law helped to define a sub-Vigo aesthetic which has an easy-assembly feel, a textbook ‘how-to-make-a-film-on-a-shoestring’, but it’s also evident that there’s a nascent instinct for the discipline of how to make 90 minutes of cinema time feel like time well spent, something which has helped to make early Jarmusch films so iconic.
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