Thoughts on Mystery Train

Saturday, November 13, 2010 1:28 PM By Simon

-Three stories converge at a a hotel in Memphis.

-Youki Kudoh and Masatoshi Nagase play a young Japanese couple, the girl obsessed with Elvis. Nicoletta Braschi is an Italian widow stranded in Memphis. Joe Strummer (The Clash!) is an unemployed Englishman in unadvised possession of a gun.

-I love Jim Jarmusch anthologies. He's the only one who can pull them off, never going over four or five storylines, with idiosyncratic casts (Screamin' Jay Hawkins as a hotel clerk, Cinqué Lee as his disheveled bellhop, Joe fucking Strummer) and mellow humor.

-The first story, I don't know if it was supposed to be like that, most of the dialogue unsubtitled Japanese. Since the DVD has no English subtitles, I settled for French, relying on my pathetic knowledge of a few sentences to at least get some context clues. So I only had a vague knowledge of what the fuck was going on. Therefore, I can't comment.

-Every story, as short as they were, felt rather complete. Does not suck.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Since the DVD has no English subtitles, I settled for French, relying on my pathetic knowledge of a few sentences to at least get some context clues. So I only had a vague knowledge of what the fuck was going on."

HAHAHAHAHA

November 14, 2010 at 8:07 PM
Simon said...

Franz: You're too kind.

November 15, 2010 at 6:28 PM