Mystery Train: Jim Jarmusch's Manifesto of the War Machine By
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1 Mystery Train: Jim Jarmusch’s Manifesto of the War Machine By Anthony DeFeo A train rockets through a veritable jungle, unseen by civilization, moving unstoppably toward Memphis, Tennessee. So begins Jim Jarmusch’s third film, Mystery Train (1989), which relays the tales of three groups of travelers all spending the same night in Memphis, each story told one after the other. For a filmmaker known for his independence of the studio system, partnering with the Japan Victor Company (JVC) to seek funding for this project may seem an odd choice. However, by avoiding traditionally American routes to the creation of a film, Mystery Train maintained Jarmusch’s style of foreign-ness, which is less a stylistic choice and more a socio-political statement. As per Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s critical work “Nomadology: The War Machine,” Mystery Train - both in practice and content - provides views of the “war machine.” This film is the height of Jarmusch’s expression, centering the stories of largely non-American characters around a place warped by the converging histories of the state and nomadism. All are brought to and from Memphis by one of the war machine’s most powerful and far-reaching limbs: mass transit, particularly the train. Over the course of one day (into night and day again), three stories converge. In the first, “Far from Yokohama,” lovers Mitzuko and Jun arrive in Memphis by train, having traveled from Japan to the states. Mitzuko is obsessed with Elvis, believing him to be the Statue of Liberty, Christ, Buddha, Madonna, and himself all at once. While her goal is to go to Graceland, they only get a tour of Sun Studios before retiring to the Arcade Hotel for the night. In “A Ghost,” Luisa’s flight delivering her husband’s body to Rome has been stopped in Memphis. After 2 evading two male pursuers, she retires to the Arcade. She runs into Dee Dee and spills the girl’s luggage; the two decide to share a room for the night. Dee Dee explains that she’s leaving town and her British boyfriend, Johnny, in the morning. While her roommate is asleep, Luisa is visited by the ghost of Elvis, who appears lost. Finally, “Lost in Space” follows Johnny, his supposed brother-in-law Charlie, and friend Will Robinson as the latter two retrieve the Brit from a bar where he’s been waving his gun around. At a liquor store, Johnny shoots the owner, and the gang drives around on the lam until settling at the Arcade. That night, after Charlie attempts to stop Johnny from an apparent suicide, he is shot in the leg. The next morning, as Mitzuko and Jun (who mention they saw Graceland beforehand) board the train followed by Dee Dee, Will and Johnny try to smuggle Charlie to a doctor in Arizona. In their description of the war machine, Deleuze and Guattari turn to the works of Heinrich von Kleist, a German poet and writer. They describe his writings as containing “secrecy, speed, and affect,” all of which are present in both the train itself and the stories contained within Mystery Train. (Deleuze & Guattari, 9) Rail has long been the fastest form of mass transport on land. Granted, this might not be a completely “secretive” motion, but there is an element of confidentiality in its absence from the screen in Mystery Train. However, a train’s movement is undeniably fast, lending the train its necessary “speed” as an element of the war machine. Finally, trains have deeply affected our perception of distance and travel; at the time of the railroad’s birth, it created an “annihilation of space and time.” (Schivelbusch, 33). With places often weeks apart suddenly separated by a matter of days or hours, the public’s perception of life as a whole changed, leading to an outpouring of travel writing and philosophical thought regarding this new mode of transport. 3 In addition, the three individual plotlines of Mystery Train all contain elements of the war machine, either in the characters themselves or their actions. “Far from Yokohama” features Mitzuko’s conspiracy theory, which she keeps squirreled away in her suitcase, as secret. There’s also the secret of Jun’s nearly perpetual silence, which he refuses to explain even to his girlfriend. The train signaling their arrival brings with it speed; the tour of Sun Records is also quite swift (and impersonal). As for affect - “the active discharge of emotion” - Jun and Mitzuko have sex in the hotel room, albeit briefly; the act is followed by a lovers’ quarrel. (Deleuze & Guattari 71) “A Ghost” contains a secret in Dee Dee’s midnight eloping, while the airport inherently contains an implication of speed with all the flights constantly coming and going. The story’s affect lives in Luisa’s shock in the face of Elvis’ ghost. Finally, “Lost in Space” carries the most weighted secret of all: Johnny has killed a liquor store owner. The speed lies in Will’s truck, with which they evade police, and the affect in Charlie’s screams as he is shot and subsequently shuttled out to the vehicle. The war machine uses these characteristics to usurp the state. In order for Jarmusch and his film to fulfill the machine’s goals, they must seek the undermining of American ideals, as he is an “American” filmmaker. In a 1989 interview, when asked if he saw the U.S. “through the eyes of a foreigner,” he replied, “I guess I do to some degree. I also feel very American so it’s kind of a contradiction.” (Johnston, louderthanwar.com) His stance on American ideals is difficult to pin down, but Mystery Train helps to further elucidate Jarmusch’s political leanings. The overall worship of Elvis, which exists in every plotline of the film, is an example of nationalist, even white-power hero praise painted in a largely negative, or at least questionable, light by the film. His bronze statue in “Far From Yokohama” (which Mitzuko eyes and mutters, 4 “King!”), his framed pictures in every room at the Arcade, and the ubiquity of his music on every Memphis-dweller’s lips and radio conjure up the ideology behind the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Such worship suggests that even though the audience never knew the King personally, he can’t be anything other than great or American (both synonymous). Suddenly, religion and state converge: “if the nationalist imagining is so concerned, this suggests a strong affinity with religious imaginings.” (Anderson, 10) With religious idols come holy sites to which pilgrims journey, much in the way Mitzuko and Jun head to Graceland. Furthermore, her theory regarding Elvis ties him to two major religious figures (Buddha and Christ), suggesting a literal worship of the man. In addition, many “nationalist” American films depict past presidents in lights the government would prefer they be remembered in. In fact, early films “portrayed presidents, particularly Abraham Lincoln, as saints,” leading to further praise by the public - worldwide - for the American ideal. (Altschuler, 19) However, in spite of the Yokohama couple’s apparent worship for Yankee music (they listen to only rock on the train; Jun can rattle off all the well-known names that recorded at Sun Studios), the other plots’ protagonists seem disillusioned by it. Luisa stumbles into America accidentally, and immediately she is swindled into buying an armful of magazines, a cup of coffee, and paying off an ill-intentioned smooth-talker. Johnny, an Englishman, has just lost his girlfriend and his job, where it seems nobody liked him anyway, regardless of the nickname they gave him: Elvis. As one can see, there is a constant return to musical motifs, which some may be hasty to write off as Jarmusch’s known composing practices and love of the art. After all, he brought a good deal of musicians on board for Mystery Train as actors, including Screamin’ Jay Hawkins 5 (shock rocker, played Night Clerk), Joe Strummer (The Clash front man, played Johnny), and Tom Waits (blues rocker, voiced Radio DJ). These casting decisions could instead be further expressions of his role as nomadic filmmaker, as Patricia Pisters suggests in her article, “The Filmmaker as Metallurgist.” She claims that “metal is more comparable to music...because both metal and music develop in a continuous variation of its own formal and material properties.” (151) The filmmaker assembles past radical media to create something new, as the metallurgist did in experimenting with earth’s minerals and materials to make weapons - another facet of the war machine. However, Pisters goes on to say that while they appear nomadic (as those who “create chaos”), metallurgists are instead “...hired by the ruling class to act as agents provocateurs and thus help the bourgeoisie…” (152) In his alliance with JVC, Jarmusch could be deviating from the nomadic path. As mentioned in the 1989 interview, he is not completely anti-American. His acceptance of funding from JVC, which is an inherently nationalist company in its name alone (Japan Victor Company), further threatens his role as state usurper. Still, the absence of an identifiably “American” form of montage in Mystery Train has the potential to reinforce his (and the film’s) warring status. As the film industry was first blossoming, montage came about as “an attempt to develop new aesthetics that echoed the progressing subjectivization in industrialized cities.” (Sonvilla-Weiss, 55). It intended to embrace the rapidly-paced, utterly redefined life that occurred for the average person after Industrialization. Instead of using American or Soviet montage techniques, which embody the fast pace and swift progression of events, Jarmusch combines those of France and Germany.