Stranger Than Paradise (1984)'s comments

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Siskoid

A very early picture for Jim Jarmusch, Stranger Than Paradise tracks a teenage Hungarian immigrant, her New York-based cousin and his hapless friend in an immigrant story/road movie hybrid that defies convention to make a statement about its characters, and people like them. See, it doesn't matter where they are - New York, Cleveland, Florida - these three never find anything to do. Every place is the same, helped along by unglamorous locations and, in this case, drab black and white. Their lack of imagination makes it impossible for them to do anything new, regardless of their location, even though they feel restless where they are. Their whole lives are TV dinners. The guys even look like one another. It seems the best they can ever do is go back to where they started, and such returns enliven the third act. And perhaps this is also a statement on immigration, a kind of blank homesickness married to the boredom of not knowing anyone in a new place. Tourists have fun, immigrants have to get down to the mechanics of settling and making a living. It's a comedy, but a satirical one, letting the audience choose if they want to mock the characters low ambitions and idleness, or if they'd rather not, given their own predilections.

5 years 3 months ago

Sunless

A critic once described Waiting for Godot as a play in which nothing happens twice. Stranger Than Paradise is a film in which nothing happens approximately seventy-five times.

9 years 5 months ago

V012

Wow. I wish I had seen this in High School. Basic low budget film making ettiquete

9 years 8 months ago

jacktrewin

watched this with my cousin last night. we both truly disliked it. afterwards we proceeded to have a conversation for a good few hours dissecting precisely why..
I was actually with it for the first 30-40 mins, but then what was seemingly a gentle build up really did lead absolutely nowhere in terms of characterisation, drama or directorial statement. the emperor's new clothes for me. I'm absolutely shocked that it's almost universally admired.

6 years 4 months ago