Three New Jim Jarmusch movie’s in One

1.

The great story about Napoleon, said to be true, that he never got any mail. ”If it’s really important, they know where to find me.”

The Napoleon story? I don’t know if it’s true or not. The truth is that I like the story whether it’s true or not. I think it’s true, it certainly could be, but I’d rather remember it as a story I read many years ago when I was much younger and had become interested in Napoleon after reading a novel by Stendhal—I think it was Stendhal—in which the great Napoleon was invoked. It doesn’t matter now, only that I’ve remembered it as being true.

(And what. in those years after Napoleon, were the Nazi’s fighting for?)

2.

What should I do when I don’t know what to do next?

Do nothing. Just watch the movie, It’s pretty good, 3 separate vignettes, a small cast of professional actors, one of whom is Tom Waits and one of whom is not Tilda Swinton, fortunately.

3.

If we must love war, why isn’t it waged by more intelligent men and women? And not this current re-tread of a person who impersonates a game-show host at best. Why aren’t we revolutionary? Have we become too content with our lives, leaving our lives to others who seem happy to manage what we’ve left behind, this hopeless pile of slop that poses as governance? Perhaps the revolutionary ‘idea’ was simply a momentary fixation, a kind of diversion that has outlived its time. Revolution once seemed so possible! Queers marched with Pansies, and Lesbos with Fags and Bull-dykes etc.. We all joined forces and held hands and marched and protested the aberrant behavirors of the ruling class. True understanding is now beyond our means. It’s not so much that the past has been twisted; it’s more than the present is now unrecognizable.

Jim Jarmusch is a gifted filmmaker. He holds on close to the kind of abstract expressionism I enjoy with the question, what do you want to do with the rest of your life?